Kenchington

Boom, phase 3: Clew outhaul Last night, I was troubled over that split cleat. If I made another one the same size, it would suffer the same fate. If I made a bigger one, it would be ugly and clunky. Then, first thing this morning while still three-quarters asleep, it came to me. I needed a very different kind of cleat. I needed one of these: They are ugly too and really only fit for clotheslines and the like, though that image came from the website of a yacht chandlery, where the thing is presented as suitable for a flag halliard. Yet it is described as 5 inches long. (Mighty big flag to require a halliard that size!) So it would be well suited to the task at hand and easy to represent in miniature. Drilled two holes through the boom, placed two of the kit-supplied copper nails in the holes, with a touch of low-viscosity CA. Once that had set, bent each nail over the tip of needle-nose pliers and then snipped off its point. Voila! Cleat for clew outhaul: I had previously rigged a length of 0.5 mm hemp cord, with a figure-of-eight stopper knot, and passed it through the "eyelet" in the sail (as in the image), and I had passed a lashing to hold the tack of the sail to the forward end of the boom. (A very annoying task, with the hyper-slippery line supplied with the kit.) So all that was needed was to pull the outhaul taut and belay on the cleat. Even at 1:12, that was easy and gave me: I'm not yet ready to belay the halliard, nor the tack downhaul, but the pram looks about ready to sail away anyway: Maybe next time I'll carry her down to the shore and get a more maritime background 😀 Tiller still to be worked on, of course. Trevor

Boom, phase 2: Sheet blocks Two steps forward, one step back today. I got close to having the sail rigged but then the clew-outhaul cleat broke off the boom and, when I tried to drill it for a nail (to give a stronger attachment) , it split in two. Back up and start over tomorrow. But at least I can report on the sheet blocks. The mainsheet is the most complex bit of rigging on the pram -- the only thing likely to be adjusted during an afternoon sail and one that will be in constant use. The kit instructions call for one end of the sheet to be held in a curious slot in the end of the boom. From there, it is rove through a block on a rope horse (bizarrely called a "traveller", which should mean the thing that travels along the horse) at the stern, thence back to the end of the boom, then forward to above the midships thwart and down to the helmsman's hand. That's one way to rig a dinghy. Indeed, it's pretty much the same as the standard way that the original Laser dinghy is rigged (and that's still the most numerous design of sailing boat ever created, as far as I am aware). Having the end of the sheet amidships has some advantages in a racing boat, principally that the helmsman can face forward and see where the boat is going while tacking. But it's an annoyance in a purely recreational boat, with the sheet forever getting in the way, while any loose loop that may form under the boom is all too likely to strangle an incautious crew member! For the pram, I'd rather keep the sheet at the stern, aside from a length leading to the hand of course. Anyway, the implementation of that Laser-like sheet lead in the kit is dreadful. A Laser has two blocks under the boom and the sheet reaves through those. I'm guessing that the full-size pram has the same, with each block attached to the boom with a U-bolt. The kit, however, has dispensed with the blocks and kept only the two U shapes (made by bending brass wire). Worse, they are aligned along the boom, so not only does our miniature sailor have to deal with the friction of metal loops in place of blocks but also the extra friction of the sheet snaking through those loops -- while the sheet gets worn away by being dragged across small-diameter metal. Yuk! Worse still, the one block that is provided in the kit rides along the rope horse with nothing more than a metal loop (formed along with the stropping of the block) around the rope. That's a quick way to wear out the horse and have it part at just the wrong moment. Bad idea when on the water! So ... I decided to go with a sheet entirely at the stern, where I will have a traveller block riding on the horse. With such a small sail on the pram, the sheet only needs to have a two-part tackle. Some people would fasten the standing part to a becket on the traveller block, lead the sheet from there up to a single block on the end of the boom, then down to the helmsman's hand. I never liked that arrangement in my dinghy-sailing days: Lose hold of the sheet for even a moment and you will find its end dangling from the boom, somewhere far out over the lee side of the boat. Very, very annoying, when it isn't much worse still. What the pram needs, in my experience, is a single block with becket shackled to the traveller block, the sheet then rove from that becket, through the block on the boom end, back down to the lower block and thence forward to the helmsman. But that means three blocks, while the kit only provides one. In fact, it provides only a rather crude blank (though not as crude as the one illustrated in the instructions), while the model builder is encouraged but not required to "improve" its shape. Anticipating that problem, I had ordered some nice blocks of the right size. I could have used three of those but building the pram is supposed to be a learning experience, so I shaped up the kit's block and made it the traveller, while the two sheet blocks are store-bought. The kit includes some copper wire to bend into a strop for the one block provided. That proved to be a very easy process, once I picked up jewelry-making pliers (with round jaws) at Michael's. There was not enough wire to strop all three blocks but I have plenty of odd bits and pieces of discarded electrical gear, so I pirated some copper conductor, twisted up a bit of multi-stranded wire of the right diameter and stropped the traveller and lower sheet blocks together, with a twist of wire substituting for a shackle between two separate units. On the left is a store-bought block stropped as called for in the instructions (later to be the upper block, on the boom end), paired with the kit-supplied block as it came. To the right is the upper block again, paired with the combination of lower block and traveller block (the latter made from the kit-supplied one). I decided to attached the upper block to the boom using a U of brass wire, much like the ones that the instructions expect the sheet to be rove through. Annealing and bending the brass was easy. Enlarging the holes in the boom wasn't hard. But trying to dry fit the U into the hole split the end off the boom. Not a problem, as I intended to hold everything together with a dollop of CA anyway. The bigger challenge was keeping the loop on the block in the U, while the U went into the holes in the boom. In the end, I held all together with masking tape until the CA had set, then filed down the ends of U until flush with the top of the boom: and then: It looked quite nice at that point, before the cleat broke off! More tomorrow, when I have made and fitted a new outhaul cleat. Trevor

Boom, phase 1: Leathering the jaws I have been away from the pram for a couple of days -- got immersed in some "real" work, only it has been more fun than work. (I'm trying to document all trawl and dredge fishing by Canadians pre-1950, as a very minor contribution to a global effort to figure out how much of the seabed was impacted before modern data collection began. No modelling interest, unless anyone really wants to build a collection of steam and motor trawlers (1890s to 1940s), but it's interesting to trace the evolution of an industry as cold, wet reality smacks up against determined entrepreneurship!) Turning back to the model: It is past time for me to face up to the complexities of the boom. I built the woodwork many days ago, shaping the spar, adding the hook-like cleat to create jaws to fit against the mast and also a (horned) cleat for belaying the clew outhaul. The boom still needs a line for lashing down the tack of the sail, plus a separate one as tack downhaul (for stretching the luff), also the clew outhaul and the upper half of the mainsheet arrangements. But first, those jaws really need some sort of chafing gear, to protect them as the boom moves around while pressed against the mast. The kit leaves the jaws as bare wood, while calling for a piece of copper on the mast to protect that. I figure that both sides of the contact need something and the obvious alternative is copper on the mast and leather on the jaws. (Could just as well be the other way around but coppering a convex surface is a whole lot easier than doing a concave one. So "leather" it will be on the boom. The end effect should look something like: The leather in that image is the dark brown sleeve on the running boom, near the mast. (That's oar leather from Shaw & Tenney, of Maine, as they supply it. So the chocolate-brown colour is the real thing.) The difference with the pram is that an inside curve has to be leathered, rather than wrapping around the boom, so it can't be sewn. Full-size, I might cut the leather so that it had tabs that could be folded outside of the jaws and nailed in place, but that would be tricky at 1:12, so I'm going with gluing the leather in place (literally, on the model, and also as the full-size version that I am trying to represent). {In case anyone is wondering, that's a rarely used boom on a (usually) loose-footed rig and only needed on long down-wind legs under light conditions. So I skipped complexities and it is held to the mast, when needed at all, by a simple snotter: I should have made the snotter longer but then I would need a longer boom and it already takes the full of the length of the cockpit.} Turning back to the pram: I would love for the "leather" to truly be leather but that would be tough to work with at 1:12. (The leather chafing gear on my boat is about 1/8-inch thick, so around 0.25mm at scale. The oar leather might be half that.) Instead, I followed the kit instructions' intentions for leathering oars using paper, though that's on the thin side for the purpose. (My heavy printer paper is about 0.125mm thick. OK for representing oar leather.) The instructions call for the paper to be painted but I thought it would be fun (and just a touch more authentic) to use leather dye. That has the advantage of soaking through the paper, so that cut edges don't stand out white, and it may suffer less from the colour cracking off over time. Anyway, I got to pour dye all over everywhere, spreading it by sponge: After letting it dry, I cut a thin strip, as wide as the jaws, glued it in place with white glue and, once that set, trimmed it by knife. The first time didn't go neatly, so I gave it a second layer and got: I think that went well -- looks as messy as my full-size efforts at doing the same thing. And I still have lots of "leather" left over for the pram's oars. Next up: Sheet blocks Trevor

It is not only deckhouses. Hatchway coamings and head-ledges should be upward extensions of the deck's substructure, with the planking added around them later. Yet kits almost never present them that way, nor are model builders warned to make things look like the above-deck structures extend below (even if, in a model, they do not). It's always a bit of a sore point with me: So many beautiful models, made with great skill and endless, patient hours, yet the deckhouses, hatchways etc. look so very unrealistic. Still, I'm sure that Bill is right: Trevor P.S.: While I agree with Wefalck that deckhouses do not sit on the planking, some vessels have had houses of a sort perched on top. I think the big American multi-masted schooners had their galleys in "cabooses" arranged that way, though I may be muddling memories. In a sense, the galley became a sacrificial add-on. Of the vessel was swept by a wave, the structure could go overside, leaving a watertight deck behind. If a proper deckhouse was fitted, it had to be strong enough to never be torn away, lest its removal left a gaping hole. Maybe it also facilitated carrying deck-loads of lumber, as the "caboose" could be lifted up and strapped on top of the load.

So sorry to hear that, Mark 🥲 Do what I would never manage and rest your hand until it is fully healed: Resting includes not replying to every message of sympathy! Trevor

Thanks JacquesC! I'm learning something of the ways of CA. A tiny drip on the end of a cocktail stick can be transferred to just where it is needed. Then two pieces of (scale) rope can be pressed together between finger and thumb. Timing is critical though: Release fingers too soon and the rope will give way. Hang on too long and you may not get your fingers back! Still, there's something going on with capillary action amongst the fibres, so that two pieces of rope can stick together before either grabs human skin too firmly. (Or maybe I just have naturally greasy, glue-repelling fingers 🙂) With time away from the house today, I've been reconsidering your: I will rig the boom first, so that I can see how badly that is angled upwards. It may be that I have to have that weird forward rake of the mast to avoid the boom drooping. But, just possibly, I could (1) release the present forestay (easily done), (2) rig a temporary and adjustable one from the masthead to a rubber band around the bow, (3) rig an equally temporary shroud on one side, (4) cut away the opposite shroud where it is attached to the mast, (5) glue "splice" an extra length to the cut end, (6) pass that through the eye in the brass mast tang, (7) adjust to a satisfactory length, while fiddling with the temporary shroud and forestay, (8) glue "splice" the new loop through the mast tang, ensuring that I have an acceptable rake and no sideways tilt, while extending the tail of the new line to meet the cut end of the old shroud, (9) "serve" over the combined "splices", (10) repeat steps 4 to 9 with the other shroud, (11) create a new, longer forestay and (12) claim that the long servings on the shrouds are to protect them from wear by the yard 😀 I'm still afraid that I would mess up and make everything worse, but your words are encouraging me to try! Trevor

Thank you for your thoughts, gentlemen! At one point, probably after reading your build log, I thought I would get a set of those. Then I thought I was clever enough to manage without. I was wrong and you had a better way. It wasn't a model-driven delay (I had some work to get on with at my keyboard) but I ended up with a 24-hour gap between doing the shrouds and getting serious about the forestay. Plenty of time to decide how to respond to the mistake. It wasn't that I lacked either time or materials for fixing the problem. My concern was how to attach replacement shrouds to the two tiny brass fittings on the mast. Joining shroud to brass then brass to mast had been OK but that was enough experience to make me doubt that I could get new shrouds into place without making everything a whole lot worse. Once I decided to press on, accept the rake and complete the forestay, the model's fate was sealed. I can't raise the enthusiasm to re-do the entire standing rigging. Maybe. With the shrouds held under that rubber band, in lieu of the Quadhands? Thinking about it now, with the experience of completing the forestay while it was in place, on the model, I wonder whether I would not have done better to CA glue the three ends while I had the mast's rake where I wanted it, as in the top image in my previous posting. I have gone years hating and fearing hardware-store CA, which never once worked for me and always created a mess. I am beginning to appreciate the hobby-store high-viscosity version but I am still wary of having drips of it anywhere near the model. So I tried marking the first shroud for length, taking the mast off the model, then gluing the "splice". By the time that I got to the forestay, I was brave enough to take a single drip of CA to the stay where it was on the model, while holding that to the length I wanted. If I had done that with each of the shrouds, then removed the mast and "served" over the glue, maybe all would have gone well. Ah well! This was always intended to be a learning experience and I am learning ... sometimes the hard way 😀 Trevor

Standing rigging -- FAILURE !!! Since my last progress report, I have finished the pram's standing rigging but the result is far less than "satisfactory". I have got the detailing quite nice but the overall effect is way off. And that's a stupid mistake to make. I thought I had figured out a solution to the challenges but it hasn't worked, so I'll explain what I have done -- not so that others can follow my path but as a warning, in the hope that the next builder of the kit may succeed where I failed. With mast, sail and one end of each piece of standing rigging prepared, the first task was to get the mast temporarily stepped, so that I could measure the required lengths. Playing that game with a 20ft mast of solid pine (!), I attach the shrouds loosely, then get the mast up while maintaining tension on the forestay, finally adjusting and tensioning everything. I figured a similar approach would do. So I caught the ends of the shrouds under a rubber band, stepped the mast and clipped the forestay around the mast and over its cleat. Then clipped the sail more or less in place and adjusted everything until I was happy with the result: The forestay largely sets the rake of the mast (though pulling in opposition to the shrouds) but the shrouds alone determine any tilt to port or starboard. I figured (1) that I could live with more error in the rake than with any tilt, and (2) getting the shrouds both equal to one another and the right length to set tension in the rigging once the forestay was finalized was too much. So the sequence was one shroud to the right length for the desired rake, then the other to exactly match, and only then the forestay made to the length needed for reasonable tension. So I moved one shroud from its rubber band to its chainplate and marked there. So far so good, then the trouble started. The forestay had fed through the hole in its hook without trouble, so I figured the shroud would too. Wrong! In fighting with it, I pulled on the end when only two strands were through the hole, wrecking the line. Smoothed that down but the mark was lost. Got everything together and went back to the model to re-check lengths but with less care than in the above image. "Spliced" and "served" the end of the shroud. Then carefully matched the length of the second shroud and attached that to its hook too. So proudly returned the rig to the model ... only to see: Way too much forward rake! That will completely ruin the appearance of the finished model. Nothing to be done, however. Attempting to cut away that rigging and start over would only make things worse. I still don't know what went wrong. Maybe the shroud slipped slightly before I got it glued. Nor do I know how to avoid the same problem another time, if I did do it over (which I won't). So ... Put that down to a learning experience and persevere with the forestay. With that hooked in place at the bow transom knee and looped around the mast, passing over its cleat. I marked where I wanted the glue "splice" to fall. I went for a very large loop (1) because I could , (2) because I feared that I might have to slip the finished loop up the mast, passing over both (horned) cleats near the foot, but also (3) because I realized that the halliard needs to pass through the forestay loop. The instructions don't have that but it ought to be done on a full-size boat of the pram's design, so on a model too. Most dinghies have forestay and shrouds meeting the mast together, at the "hounds", often with a jib halliard just below. If the mainsail is Bermudan, it will rise higher but its halliard will likely run down inside a hollow mast. Or else the belaying point of the halliard may be offset to one side or the other. The pram has the halliard sheave very near the masthead and the halliard cleat on the centreline of the mast. The yard hangs below the shrouds (and far enough below that it can swing freely from side to side, when the sheet is eased) but the forestay is (oddly) set much lower still, presumably so that the forward end of the yard does not get caught between mast and forestay. Yet that leaves the forestay and the halliard cutting across one another (on the centreline of the mast), leading to friction, wear and failure. Simple solution: Lengthen the forestay loop and reave the halliard through it. With the marks made, I removed the forestay from the model and "served" the whole of the loop -- as I would in full-size to prevent wear of the stay against the mast. Then I re-assembled everything, glued the "splice" with the forestay in place, such that I could control the tension in the rig, and even "served" over that "splice" with the mast stepped and rigged: That much went well, even if the "serving" is too lumpy. However, even perfection in the forestay could not resolve the excess length of the shrouds: It won't look quite as bad once the boom is rigged and the tack of the sail brought abaft the mast. But a huge disappointment all the same 😭 Trevor

Coming together really nicely! Trevor

Whatever floats your boat! There's plenty of full-size dories on this coast that are not in the traditional colour scheme.

Dories and "dory buff" paint are still very much a living tradition in Nova Scotia. Human memories fade, of course (though not as quickly as the pigments in 1920s marine paints 😀), but I've never heard of anyone doubting that all Lunenburg schooner's dories were buff with green trim. That's just the way to was and still is. Trevor

I will have to go in search of examples!

Not as they are when full of wind and pulling. Or has someone been keeping their art hidden from me? 😀

Thank you, Mark! A very different technique to your lovely Endeavour sails, with a different final appearance. Now, if only we had a way to make model sails really look like:

Thank you, JacquesC!

By having fire-tubes that run the length of the boiler, then turn and run back again, or else a combustion chamber that extends the length of (but below) the water, then fire-tubes that return through the water. It's not just a land vs marine divide. There were (are) traction-engine boilers, railway locomotive boilers, freshwater boilers, marine boilers, not to mention the various static boilers used in heating or generating plants ashore. Then there were fire-tube boilers, water-tube boilers, low-pressure boilers, high-pressure boilers ... all with engineers constantly striving for advances that improved efficiency or lowered costs, including maintenance costs and the like. Trevor

Some Thoughts on Rigging the Pram: The pram, like most sailing dinghies of its vintage, has three pieces of standing rigging: One forestay and one shroud per side (though the kit instructions call them "back stays"). The lengths of each of those are to be measured in situ, as it were, with the mast stepped and each line led from its mast-end to its attachment point on the hull. The first problem with that is that the mast is free-standing in its step and can be raked at any of a wide variety of angles, limited only by the position of the forward thwart. The instructions call for the forestay to be created first but its length will depend on the rake chosen, while the instructions say no more than "Put the mast in place". Past build logs on MSW show the mess that can result, with the outer end of the boom falling so low that the mainsheet cannot be rigged effectively -- while we should be building the boat such that a 6-inch sailor could duck under the boom at every tack. (Even if the pram is reckoned too small to be comfortably sailed by a burly adult man, she ought to accommodate a lithe and 5-inch tall teenager!) If the intent was to actually sail the model on a pond, it would be necessary to adjust the rake until the centre of effort of the sail fell slightly abaft a vertical drawn through the centre of lateral resistance of the hull/daggerboard/skeg/rudder combination -- which would be quite far aft. As nobody is likely to set their model pram afloat (and I certainly won't), that step can be fudged but it is necessary to set the rake of the mast such that the clew of the sail (and hence the boom) are high enough to look plausible. And to do that, other than by guesswork, it is necessary to have the sail hoisted when determining the rake, hence before setting the length of forestay and shrouds. Another problem that has led to comments in past build logs is that the free-standing mast won't support itself in the chosen position while the model builder fusses with the length of the forestay. I figured that it would help with working through those two challenges if as much as possible was prepared in advance. In this posting, I'll try to explain what preparations I have made and why. On Tuesday, I got most of the sail finished, though still needing some gentle cleaning up with a knife. The remaining tasks were to create eyelets and then to add a boltrope. A full-size sail for a light daysailing recreational boat would come from a commercial sail loft with plastic eyelets inserted by a hydraulic press, preferably with a metal thimble inserted in each to take the wear of whatever gear is attached. They look something like: For a nice, traditional look, however, the pram should have hand-sewn eyelets, in which a rope (or, rather, twine) grommet is sewn to the canvas with radiating stitches (and again a thimble inserted), something like: Though that isn't a great picture. (And isn't a great eyelet either but I did my best!) Nobody's going to try that stitching at 1:12, of course, but the kit instructions offer a neat alternative in which blobs of paint are put on each side of the sail (to represent the stitching) and a hole drilled through. In reality, the sail twine would likely be white but that would not offer any colour contrast. The instructions suggest using buff instead and I did. I guess I could have gone all the way and added a touch of brass paint in the drilled hole but I skipped that! Anyway, the process went well, with one eyelet in each corner of the sail (set through as many thicknesses of cloth as were available) and 8 more, evenly spaced along its head. I did follow the instructions in using a #55 and a #60 drill bit (or the nearest metric equivalents) but later enlarged the holes with a needle. The instructions do not anticipate the pram's sail being roped and it is quite likely that such a small sail, if made of Dacron cloth, would not need any more edge reinforcement than the tabling. However, there is a problem seen in some past build logs -- and not only ones featuring this pram kit: It seems to be very difficult to bend model sails to model spars, without the lacing or robands ending up loose, which is unseamanlike and hence unsatisfactory to a sailor's eye (or at least to this sailor's eye). Yet, even at full size, bending a small sail tightly to a spar without crumpling the canvas outside the line of eyelets is awkward -- doubly so if that edge is just unsupported cloth. So I chose to add a boltrope to the head of the sail to make it easier to lace canvas to yard in a convincing way. Having decided to do that, I chose to suppose that my pram has a cotton sail, requiring that the roping extend down the luff. (The foot shouldn't need more than the tabling, while roping the leech would mess up airflow. (Anyway, the leech is well supported by its alignment to the warp of the sailcloth.) In practice, I used some (genuine) hemp cord from the local fabric-store's supply for pre-teen "jewelry" makers, soaked it in dilute glue and laid it on the cloth. That got me to a finished sail: Next up was bending that to the yard. As noted in a previous post, each end of that spar has a single laser-cut hole for an earring and a hole cut vertically at that. There's no ideal way to pass an earring with that configuration but I ended up tying a stopper knot a bit back from one end of the kit-supplied line (0.3mm diameter) and passing both ends downwards through the hole. (I started with a figure-of-eight knot but one of them pulled through, so I added an overhand knot on top of the figure-of-8. That was big enough to hold.) The instructions call for the peak earring ("lashing" in the booklet) to be passed first and the sail placed equally along the length of the yard. Even if the earring holes were equally distant from the ends (which they are, very properly, not), that would be a dumb thing to do: The projecting forward end of the yard, beyond the throat of the sail, is liable to get caught up around the mast and standing rigging, so its length needs to be limited as much as reasonably possible. So ... I passed the throat earring first, tied that down, then passed the peak earring and pulled the head of the sail taut. Each earring needs to both pull the head of the sail along the yard and hold one corner of the sail to the yard. In practice, with two ends of an earring projecting from the same hole in the yard, I passed one port-to-starboard through the sail's eyelet and the other starboard to port, pulled tight and tied a reef knot around the edge of the sail. I then passed the ends around the yard, knotted those again, added a drop of glue and cut off the surplus line. (Then messed up, messed about, repeated etc., but got it OK in the end.) Having decided to tie the halyard around the yard, rather than relying on a metal fitting, it was best to get that done before lacing the sail tightly. The kit offers 0.7mm line for the halliard. That's 1/3-inch diameter (1" circumference, to anyone in the UK), which is very small for running rigging. I substituted some 1mm braided line that I had on hand. Not ideal for the role but OK. Lacing the head of the sail was easy enough. I passed an end of 0.3mm line through the eyelet next to the peak, tied it there with a couple of half-hitches, then rove the lacing much as shown in the instructions -- which present the appropriate way of passing the line down the row of eyelets, though not how it is to be tied effectively. The idea is to pass the line through an eyelet, then around the yard, then tucked between lacing and sail, just next to the eyelet ... before moving on to the next eyelet. The instructions show the tucks made along the upper side of the spar, where they serve no function. The idea is to pull tight each turn around the yard, then tighten it further by hauling on it with the tucked-under end, which needs the tuck alongside the eyelet. Hard to put into words but easy enough once you try. Worked that down the length of the head, then tied off the end of the lacing to itself, beside the last eyelet. And the result was: Meanwhile, I got started on the standing rigging. The three pieces have six ends between them, of course. On the pram, the forestay is looped around the mast, so that will get special treatment later. The other five ends are attached to either small (Brittannia metal) hooks or else photo-etched brass rigging plates. At full size, each of those 5 ends must be passed around a thimble, as tight turns seriously weaken rope, while tight turns around sharp metal soon end with failure, if the rope is under any load. However, the kit offers no thimbles and I could not find any at the right size, so fudge that one. Whether with a thimble or not, there are several ways to attach rigging to end fitting. The instructions offer the simplest: Just tie the line with a couple of half hitches. Simple but ugly and definitely not seamanlike. At the opposite end, they could be spliced. I certainly would at full size but I'm not even going to try at 1:12, so I needed some intermediate. As an optional alternative, the instructions suggest turning the stay back on itself, gluing it there and then clapping on a couple of seizings -- or rather faking them with turns of 0.3mm line. That would be OK, though 0.3mm twine would be way too thick for seizing the 0.7mm line provided for the standing rigging. I opted for another version: Faking splices by gluing the stay (with CA), then covering the fake with a "serving" of thread. I know that serving of model rigging gets a bad name (unless done properly on a machine) but that's because the material used as serving twine is usually far too thick. I have a reel of fine sail-thread (for machine-sewn seams) in a suitable dark-brown shade, which can serve well enough as 1:12 tarred marline. It's still awkward stuff to work with but OK if bound tightly around something larger. To make that viable, however, I couldn't actually pass turns of the thread around the "splice", as in a true serving. Instead, I tied it on in the form of a West Country whipping: Passing two ends in opposite directions around the stay, tying half of a reef-knot every time those cross (i.e. twice in each round turn) and finishing with a full reef knot (and a drop of CA). First step is to pass the end of the stay through the hole in its attachment fitting, then catch the loop in the line with a couple of turns of the thread, with half reef knots at the crossings. While the friction is enough to hold things but not so much as to resist a gentle pull, settle everything into place and glue: It does need to be under tension while the "service" is put on. Working at the kitchen table, I rigged everything up between salt and pepper mills: That image also shows the completed serving (before the ends were snipped), though it is not in focus. That's the lower end of the forestay on its hook. I fastened the upper ends of the shrouds to their rigging plates in the same way. Then I passed one brass nail through the further end of one plate, through the mast and through the other plate, clipped the point and peened the end of the nail. Took two tries but I ended with the shrouds attached to the mast. I cut the halliard to more than twice mast height (as the model sailor will need to drop the yard into the boat and still have hold of the other end of the halliard), then got it through the dumb sheave at the masthead (with difficulty, but it went in the end). And that (finally!) got me to the image that I posted last night. Next challenge will be supporting the mast while measuring the lengths of the forestay and shrouds. But I need to solve that before reporting what I did. Trevor

Both very neat and very interesting! Do you have a source for that stove design or was it someone's imagination? The brick galley fireplaces I have seen reported in the archaeological literature (and the only one I have personally handled) were all much simpler. Trevor

Stop trying to make me sorry that I live north of the border!

But not giving the pockets enough width is a newbie mistake!

I am still making progress with the pram, though other demands have drawn me away a bit. I have finished the sail and bent it on to the yard. It's getting late here, so I don't have time tonight to explain the details and my reasoning but, to prove that I have not been entirely idle, this is how the rig is looking so far:

When you do get to start building, Volume 9 in the Viking Ships Museum (in Roskilde, Denmark) series "Ships and Boats of the North" is titled: "The Oseberg Ship. Reconstruction of form and function". I haven't seen that one yet but I do have the first six volumes in the series. They are written by and for archaeologists but, if you want the latest understanding and interpretation of the ship, it might be worth getting your hands on a copy. Author is Vibeke Bischoff, published 2023 or '24 (different listings disagree) and ISBN is 978-87-85180-77-3. No price stated on the Museum's website but Indigo have it listed at $78 Canadian, so you might get a copy for under $60 in the US. A bargain for a hard-cover of 294 pages, probably with lots of colour, if the earlier volumes in the series are any guide. Trevor

The current refit of the ship is supposed to be returning her to as near her Trafalgar appearance as possible. That effort is backed up by a whole lot of research, which has turned up various surprises, reversing previous assumptions. In general, I'd take however she is being presented as being as close to the state Nelson knew her, in his last days, as modern knowledge can get -- and as an advance over any kit instructions prepared a few years back. However, if you want to check a particular detail, you could go looking for any published explanation of why the ship is being shown that way. If there is nothing published, contact the restoration team and ask! Trevor

Looking good! I think that's true. Probably one reason why 19th and 20th Century lapstrake construction tended to have steam-bent timbers that only touched each plank at its upper edge. A nice solution! Trevor

Thank you, Mark! And good to see you back on MSW 😀 I had had a little experience of the white-glue-on-cloth approach when making the fishing gear for my banks dory (taking the idea from the pram instructions, while reading ahead), but I had not anticipated the effect when using that approach for a sail. It makes for a very flat, lifeless appearance that is not remotely realistic. If the highest form of our art is taken to be the original "Navy Board" models, with their exposed and simplified framing, then a technique that produces a flat rendition of a prototype's sail-plan can have its place in a display model -- which is what I aim for with the pram kit. But anyone who wants a model to look like a real boat or ship needs a different approach. I'm already wondering whether the sails of my Muscongus Bay lobster sloop (next-up in the Model Shipways trio) might have the tabling and other reinforcing done with white glue but the belly of the sail left soft. Some round in the cut of luff and head (to be straightened when those are tight against mast and gaff) might then throw a bit of shape into the sail and make it more lively. I'll have to think about that and perhaps experiment a bit. Trevor