Kenchington

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

I don't think you did badly at all with the planking, though I see where the strakes slipped at the stern, shifting everything higher (or lower, with the hull upside down on the building board). It's a difficult kit to get as close as you have done -- and impossible to meet the marked curve on the transom without trimming the sheerstrakes! Trevor

Yesterday, I made a first attack on my pram's tiller, taking a Dremel to the hardwood piece. I ended up sanding a bit too far in one place (down to 2mm thickness, when I intend to stop at 3). I will keep going with it all the same. Even if I cannot use it in the end, it will give me a better way to determine the shape that I really want in a second effort. Today, with an unseasonable snowstorm, I turned instead to Step 48: Sailmaking. I don't pretend to any expertise at that trade, but I've had to learn enough of the real thing to be able to maintain my own (full-size) sails and to once convert a foresail for points reefing. Even so, anyone who wants to know all that I do of sailmaking (and a whole lot that I forgot soon after reading) should get hold of Emiliano Marino's "The Sailmaker's Apprentice". I had read a lot else before coming across that book but I doubt there is anything that he did not cover better than most others have done. One thing to understand for those who have only built sails for models: Normal cloth has limited stretch in the (perpendicular) directions of the warp and weft but almost no resistance to stretching at 45° to those fibres. (Spinnaker fabric and the ultra-modern materials of today's racing sails are different, but those are not of concern here.) The pram kit's instructions edge towards that point, calling for the provided cloth to be spread by length and width, before gently pulling on the corners. Then its sail pattern indicates that the warp (or weft) should run vaguely diagonally across the sail. But it does not explain why. Why is because unsupported edges of sails must be aligned with either warp or weft, otherwise, they will stretch out of shape, while casting wind-disrupting creases across the sail. In the case of our pram, the leech must be aligned with the fibres of the cloth -- or as aligned as can be, given that the leech is curved (curved into a "roach" by the universal usage of modern sailors, though in the days of working sail convex edges were called "rounds" and "roaches" were concave). The pram's sail's head will be supported by lacing to the yard, while the lesser forces on the luff and foot can be adequately supported by tabling and roping. Those are full-size requirements, of course, but ones that can be replicated at model scale, within reasonable bounds. In the case of the pram kit, the intent is to produce a firm, flat sail, suited to a display model. It will have all of the obvious features of the real thing but none of its curves, folds or flexibility. In practice, the first task was to iron the supplied cloth and smooth out the deep creases produced by its packaging. To iron it, then iron it again and then once more before all was smooth. (Not a problem: I had a load of laundry to work through!) In parallel with that, I printed off three copies of the instructions' sail pattern: That proved to be printed to the proper size (6-inch or 150mm length of foot) in the booklet but persuading my computer to output a hardcopy at the same size was annoying. One of the three copies, I trimmed to the size of the finished sail. The other two I cut up to show the four "tablings", meaning the extra layer of cloth along each edge of the sail. Tablings are not hems, or they should not be. (Some sailmakers economize by making "rolled tablings", which are hems by another name.) A tabling is a separate, extra piece of cloth, with warp and weft aligned with those of the main layer of cloth. In the case of the pram's sail, three of the tablings are just straight strips but the one for the leech must follow the correct curve. Its outer edge will be trimmed later (along with all other edges of the sail) but the inner edge will show on the finished sail and hence must be cut carefully -- which needs a paper pattern. Besides, while plenty of cloth is provided in the kit, getting all four templates out, while preserving the correct orientation of warp and weft is a bit fiddly. Having the patterns to push around helps. The instructions call for the assembly of the sail to be done on a clean cutting board but other build logs report that that isn't enough to prevent staining of the cloth, so I followed the usual recommendation and first taped plastic food-wrap to my board, then the cloth on top, carefully laid flat and taped down. The instructions then call for diluting white glue "to about the consistency of cream" (with no hint of the grade of cream) and painting the cloth with it. I found that even the small amount of water I added needed a whole lot more glue before I got anything thicker than skimmed milk. However, I kept on adding more until it was somewhat thicker than homogenized milk but far short of whipping cream (let alone the Devonshire clotted cream of my childhood!). That seemed to work well enough.I brushed it on liberally: It was fun, slopping on the glue with no need for the precision required when bevelling planks and transoms. Once all was dry, the whole-sail paper pattern could go over the larger piece of cloth, its leech oriented to the weave, and the four corners were marked in pencil. The key marks, though, are the locations of the ends of the inner margins of the tabling. Those have to be aligned properly, whereas the outer edges will be trimmed along with the rest of the sail. Then the tablings could be cut out, given fresh glue on one side and placed on the sail. Next up were the three battens (marked on the pattern), which are cut from 1/32 x 1/16 basswood stock provided in the kit. To simplify their placing, I marked each with the point where it should cross the inner edge of the leech tabling, while letting it extend across the tabling to the position of the leech itself. The cloth at that time extended much further, so cutting the sail out later would meant cutting to the end of each batten. Now, the kit instructions say to glue each batten to the sail, while wetting its other side to stop it warping. Though I have read of, often used and sometimes seen, various alternatives for handling battens (right up to the complexities of Chinese lug rig, being constructed by two ladies at the maritime museum in San Francisco), but I have never heard of a sail batten being glued to the sailcloth. I am confident that that was only intended as a simplified alternative for the novice model builder. What the full-size pram most probably has is a pocket for each batten, made of an extra piece of cloth sewn onto one side of the sail. The inner end of the pocket would have a piece of elastic, to force the further end of the batten against the stitching of the leech. In order to get the batten in and out of the sail, such a batten pocket has a diagonal extension at the leech end, where the extended bit is not sewn to the tabling, leaving a slit into which the batten can be inserted. So I cut suitably shaped pieces of cloth (from the pre-glued and dried material), then glued those over the battens. What I had not allowed for was the 1/32 stock being much too thick for scale, so my "pockets" turned out as slight covers. At least they stopped the battens from warping and they can be easily replaced if necessary. Once all that was well and truly dry, I followed the instructions, freed the developing sail from the cutting board and turned it over. Its four corners then got reinforcing patches (as a full-size sail would) that end up as triangular but, when first glued down, can be any convenient offcuts from the glued-and-dried material, provided that they are large enough to span the corner of the finished sail. The instructions would leave the cloth of the sail at that point but it is about 6ft (full-size) from leech to luff at its maximum. Nobody makes sailcloth that wide. I opted to "make" my pram's sail from three lengths of cloth, arranged parallel to the leech. In reality, I glued narrow strips, representing seams, down the sail from head to foot. One turned out wider than the other. That's OK by me: "Broadseaming" is one way that a sailmaker adds curvature into sail! At that stage in its development, the sail was an ugly mess: However, once all was dry again, the mess could be released from the cutting board, flipped over and trimmed to match the pattern, using a straight edge and a curved Exacto blade. I muffed the curve of the leech a bit but nothing too bad: It still needs "eyelets" (for which the instructions offer a rather neat solution), some trimming of the corners around those, plus roping (which I will explain once it is done). But that's for tomorrow, when I should also get serious about the standing rigging. Trevor

Thanks for that Palmerit! I am still a long way from the NRG Half Hull but I can dimly see it, somewhere in my future. I was hoping to one day build it with contemporary textbooks open beside me (or, rather, reprints kept safely away from the glue pot!), in hopes that I might finally understand ship planking. However, it seems that we face at least four different ways of planking. First would be the wrong way (maybe multiple variants of the wrong way), which typically ends up with bottom planks curving up to butt against a band of planking beneath the wales. Ugly mistake, unless covered with lots of paint or an outer layer of properly-laid planks. Next up, there's the right way to build a lapstrake boat, which is followed by the Model Shipways dory and pram (albeit with the burdens on the novice builder eased). For the full-size boat-builder, that involves "spiling" (laying an edge over the moulds, be it a wooden spile or your manilla folder, then taking lots of measurements from that to the previously fitted plank), followed by sawing a complex, curved shape out of a broad board. The dory and pram kits have those shapes laser-cut, of course. From your post, it seems that the Half Hull kit intends the same approach, but with the model-builder doing their own spiling. That and a whole lot more strakes, of course. But that is not how full-size wooden ships are planked. For one thing, plank was (and is) expensive and wider planks are disproportionately more costly. So nobody would want to cut a 12-inch curved piece out of a 24-inch plank if they could avoid doing that. Also, ship planking is not just a waterproof skin over an internal frame: It makes a major contribution to the structural strength of the hull. (Indeed, as the NRG kit is of an 18th-Century English or Colonial vessel, I could add that most of the real thing's futtocks would only be attached to one another or to the floors through their connections to the external planking and internal longitudinal pieces -- clamps, spirkets, footwaling etc.) That need for strength demands that the shipwright minimize any cutting across the grain of the plank. In many hulls, some "edge bend" becomes unavoidable in places, yet bending full-size plank in that dimension is almost impossible. The solution was to pick out planks that had "sny", meaning that the grain curved across the face of the plank, such that a side-curving plank could be sawn with no more than minimal cross-grain cutting. (Smythe distinguished "sny" from "hang" by the direction of curvature in the grain. I don't know who used the dual terms nor when.) However, pieces with sny were rare (and likely almost unavailable today), hence expensive and only to be used when all else would fail. I guess that the edge-bending required by the Vanguard kits could be seen as a model-builder's approximation to a shipwright's exploitation of any sny to be found in his available material, though the lack of any cost penalty won't encourage more-economical use of straight plank wherever possible. Maybe I should look at building two of the NRG kits, one by model-building techniques and one by those of shipwrights! Trevor

Looking good!

You may well be a much better model builder than I am. But I could don't have mad that work. Dry-fit planks are too unstable and the fit of each strake, when finally glued in, is too uncertain until everything sets. I had to build one plank at a time. But if you can do better: Go for it! Trevor

Yes, the knee is supposed to be in contact with the keel plank. (Full-size, that would be essential to the structural integrity of the boat.) The piece I added in the end (after planning, then rejecting, a couple of other solutions) looks like the butt end of an extra plank externally but, internally, it is more like a downward extension of the knee and is probably invisible even with the closest examination. I suspect that a full-size builder would shape the knee so that it extended between the bottom planks and contacted the keel plank. But he (or she) would be building the boat upright, not inverted, and with plenty of space to work inside the developing hull! Trevor