Kenchington

Short answer is "it depends". Depends for one thing on how long it will be before the sail is set again. Then there is a difference between a staysail properly so called, meaning one with its luff attached (by hanks or lacing) to one of the permanent stays of the standing rigging, and a sail set "flying", with no attachment to the standing rigging. If the staysail is hanked or laced to a stay, it would only be removed as a maintenance task, not in setting and furling sail during a voyage. Harland ("Seamanship in the Age of Sail") says that the quick way was to release one end of the stay, pass it through the hanks, then re-attach and tighten the stay -- not something to be done at sea if you can avoid it. The alternative is to cut the lashings of all the hanks, then bring hanks and sail to the stay and replace the lashings. That can be a long job. (Been there, done that ... or rather assisted the sailmaker as he did it, perched on the tip of Stad Amsterdam's jibboom.) So a staysail would not normally be removed from the stay and all of its running gear would remain attached, with the ends belayed as normal. Sails set flying (like the original "flying jibs", before that came to mean just the most forward headsail) would normally be brought down and stowed somewhere safe when not set, unless there was an intention to set them again soon. What were left were the halliard, a running stay that supplemented the sail's luff rope in bearing the various loads, a downhaul, sheets (with blocks and pendants) and (according to Harland) a "clewrope" for controlling the sail's clew until the sheets were attached. The clewrope would presumably be stowed somewhere convenient when not in immediate use, whether the sail was set or not. I'll guess that the normal thing for the others was to fasten their ends somewhere convenient, such as the bowsprit cap for a flying jib's gear (saving the need to send a man out on the jibboom), then hauled taut and belayed as normal. However, if it was expected that the sail would not be needed again for some time, all of its running rigging was most likely unrove, coiled up and stowed away safely. When needed again, a man would be sent aloft with a heaving line. Once at the halliard block, say, he would lower the weighted end of the heaving line to the deck (ensuring that it fell into the appropriate gaps amongst other rigging -- which might need other men to guide the end as it went down, such as through the lubber hole in the top). On deck, the halliard could be bent on and then hauled up to the block, rove through and its end passed down once more (again through the right gaps). It the gear to be sent aloft was too heavy for one man to haul up, he went up with a gantline and its block, rigged that, passed both ends down to the deck and as many as needed could then haul the weight aloft. If that all sounds like a lot of work, remember that the jibboom would have been run in when the flying jib's running gear was unrove, so another bunch of men would be hauling the heel rope, passing a fid, setting up shrouds (if any) and more. Handling a square-rigger is a lot of work and more so with earlier rigs. (Much of the evolution of rigs was to allow ship-handling with less labour and hence less labour cost!) But how to represent that at scale? That's the model-maker's choice! Trevor P.S.: Those who rely on Harland's book (and I do), might be interested in one snippet: John H. hold me that, when he wrote it, he had never been to sea under square rig. He worked entirely from contemporary written accounts!

That goes too far, sir! I have to admit to being pleased with the dory, as a first attempt at a model boat (teenage and earlier plastic ships excepted). But one big advantage of not posting a build log was that the scratch-built fishing gear in the final product distracts a viewer's eye from the errors in my assembly of the kit. Trevor

You have nicely photographed something that I worried over with the Model Shipways dory and I'm still not sure of the answer. When you have bevelled and faired the bottom boards, transom and knee, ready to receive the garboards, the aftermost, lowest point must be one of three things: 1: A narrow flat formed by the lowest point of the transom, reaching to the underside of the bottom and covering the end of the bottom boards; 2: A similar flat formed by squaring off the very end of the bottom boards, with the transom on top (and also squared off); or else 3: A point, where the tips of the bottom and the transom just meet. I think that full-size dories are built on their bottoms, so I would doubt #1 in the prototype, though that may not matter in a model. What might matter is if an offset from the kit-designer's intent caused later problems when bringing the planking to the sides of the transom. Your kit has a squared lower end to the transom, in its laser cut. (The Model Shipways one comes to a point.) You have aligned it so that the inboard face of the transom meets the tip of the bottom, which will mean bevelling the transom away to nothing at its lower end. I think I might have set the transom and its knee a little further forward, so that the outboard face just meets the tip of the bottom (meaning that the outboard face of the transom would be bevelled away to nothing but the inboard would still have width). But I still don't know which would be "right", let alone which the kit-designer intended! Whichever it should be, better to be sure before proceeding any further. Trevor

What a strange way to mark a bevel line! I suppose they have skipped the need for a separate template by shaping the curve of the stem to match that of the bottom boards, near the bow. It may not matter just where you measure the distance in from the edge of the stem, if the curve of the bottom is steady over the whole area near the bow. (It won't, of course, be steady throughout the length of the dory.) But I would think long and hard before assuming that 1/8 was an error for 1/16. They may be telling you that the upper part of the stem needs to be bevelled to a triangular section. Get that wrong now and there will be trouble later.

My mum put me in one that was an antique even then! But I'm not sure whether there's a lot of work in the kit or just a lot of verbiage on my part. The transoms do serve as the most important building moulds and yet are rather prominent, external features in the finished model. The dual role probably complicates things a bit.

Steps 1, 2 (in part) & 3 (completed) Not much progress today -- more retrograde movement, if anything! My best excuse is that, with confidence in the properties of yellow glue (born of building the model dory), I tackled a repair of a piece of 18th-Century furniture that I had put off for years, terrified of messing it up. Nice cross-over use of modelling skills. In truth, after all my verbiage yesterday about the need to set up the pram's building board properly, I began to think that I had not done well enough. Foolishly allowing excellence to become the enemy of good, I took the moulds off, ready to try again -- then split the tab on each of them. Bah! I'm rebuilding and it will end better than it was, but I can only reconstruct one mould at a time. Otherwise, I got on with the transoms. The instructions call for first shaping one knee for each transom, then putting those aside and starting on the bow transom, then turning to the lower stern one, then the bow one again, then the stern ... Sounds like far too much chance to lose or damage small pieces, so I started with the bow transom, then added its knee and only when that was finished did I start on the stern transom. Incidentally, for those who, like Mark, "have no idea what a sailing pram is", the definition lies in the bow transom. A small boat with a flat forward end, rather than a pointed stem (or anything else), is a "pram" or "pram dinghy". I don't think that the term would be applied to larger vessels, even ones with flat fronts. I thought that it was derived from the "praam" or "pram", a form of river and coastal barge once used in northern Europe, but the etymologists seem to say no. I can only guess that somebody once looked at a snub-nosed boat and drew a parallel with an old-fashioned baby-carriage. The Model Shipways kit is of an elegant, lapstrake pram, one example of a type developed in Norway. I have no idea when they emerged, nor what they are called in their own country. Stubbier prams became popular in the 1960s because it was possible to home-build a boat with even the longest pieces cut from 8-by-4 plywood sheets, and yet have as much usable internal space as a 10 or 12-foot boat with a pointy bow could provide. They also take up less space, either on board a cruising yacht if used as a tender or else in a garage at home. Some designs remain very popular, notably the Optimist dinghy, fleets of which are raced by determined pre-teens, dreaming of America's Cup glory. To return to the model pram ... The laser marks on the transoms are on their outboard faces, showing bevelling lines. The knees that brace between the transoms and the keel plank are necessarily on the inboard faces, so the first task is to mark the bow transom for the position of the knee. Past build logs included the excellent idea of marking each of the two small pieces while they were still attached to their sheet -- especially excellent for the bow transom of my kit as it had been cut square to the edge of the sheet. Very easy to pencil in a perpendicular centreline, doubly so as the laser also cut a centreline bolt hole. Adding guidelines for placing the sides of the knee was only a little trickier. I did have to first remove some char that had "leaked" onto the back of the sheet but no problem there. If I was building such a boat full-size, I wouldn't be satisfied with the finish until I could run my fingertips over it and not feel any blemish, so the greatest roughness in the model should be 1/12 as large as something that can't be felt. That's probably unattainable but basswood does get silky smooth when polished with a very-fine sanding stick. Hence, all surfaces that will be visible in the finished model, including the inboard face of the transom, will get that polishing. With that done, both the bow transom and its knee could be released from their sheet: The knee got the usual treatment: Its two faying surfaces were sanded against a square, to clear the char without losing the shape. The curved surface, which will be visible, was gently cleaned of char, its ends rounded off into neat toes, then the angular edges of that curve softened. Polished the flat sides of the knee to a satisfying smoothness and it was ready to be glued in place. No problem knowing which leg of the knee goes on the transom, as the longer one is nearly as long as the transom is high. Keeping it accurately aligned was challenging but at least it is not too critical to get the knee's angle exactly at the edge of the transom: Although the instructions don't say so, there will have to be a fillet between the knee and the keel plank. (More on that when I get to fitting the bottom planks.) Outcome was OK, though the photo shows that I should clear a bit more char: I left that for a few hours, to be sure that the glue was fully set, as the next step could put more stress onto the construction than I would wish. The demanding task was bevelling the edges of the transom to receive the planks -- bringing the outboard, forward face down to the marks, as the last of the char is sanded away at the edge of the inboard face, in the usual way. There will be 8 planks directly attached to the transom but the two bottom planks lie flat, side-by-side, so there are only 7 bevelled surfaces. Four of them are small enough on the full-width, inboard face of the transom but tiny where they meet its outboard face. I followed the instructions' advice and mounted the transom in a vice (gently, and with protective card between basswood and metal jaws), then went at the task carefully. I did wonder why the instructions say to glue the knee in place before clamping everything in a vice. It seems a cack-handed thing to do. However, the surface of the knee that will later touch the keel plank (or would if no fillet was needed) is an excellent guide to the angle of the critical bevel -- the one that takes the bottom planks. (As the instructions say, the other bevels can be adjusted a bit later on, to match the positions of the previously-added planks. The bottom planks go on first and the broad bevel for them needs to be right.) There are two dangers that the instructions don't mention and which have led to trouble in some builds shown on MSW. First, although each plank curves along its length and most twist too, they always remain flat across their faces. Thus, each bevelled surface should be flat too -- angled in 3 dimensions relative to the transom but flat within themselves. That calls for firm wrists, stiff sanding sticks and lots of care. Second, the laser marks make the broad, central bevel for the bottom planks as wide as those planks can be. There is a problem (one that I'll return to later) in the design of those planks which too easily produces an ugly gap between them, where they pass across the transom. If the bevelling is taken beyond its marks, its width will increase and the gap get harder to cope with. Even a tenth of a millimetre extra width could cause trouble. In particular, there is no need to sand down until the bevel is flush with the knee, if that got glued on a little away from the edge of the transom, as a fillet will be needed no matter what. The final step in preparing the bow-transom unit is to extend the laser-cut bolt hole in the transom itself through the knee. It has to pass through a tiny piece of basswood and other people have reported trouble with splintering. I followed the suggestion of first wrapping the knee with masking tape and then, being gentle with the drill bit and pin vice, had no trouble. The instructions say, cryptically, that we should "drill a #55 hole". That may be a reference to the drill bits sold by the "Exacto" or "Excel" company (which do list their drill sizes that way), though it has been said on MSW that the "55" is a reference to AWL -- the American Wire Gauge. If so, #55 should mean 1.32 mm diameter. As my kit came with a set of metric bits, I used 1.3 mm and it seemed right. With that done, the bow-transom unit could be set aside. I then made a start on the stern transom but only as far as gluing its knee, before leaving that to set well. As the stern construction is a bit complex (and very poorly explained in the instructions), I'll wait until it is finished before explaining what I have done and why.

Maybe it's in the eye of the beholder. I'm looking at one of MacAskill's images of the original, alongside a shot of the replica as she came down the ways in 1963 and I can't see much difference. But if you can, go with your perception! Still, the original did have a diesel and a screw, not at first but from 1936. They had to take the motor out when she raced in '38 as its weight would have slowed her, not to mention the drag of the screw. Later, when she was sold for freighting, she was fully powered with her rig cut down. There had been a few attempts to put motors in fishing schooners before 1914 but it really only became viable with the advances in marine diesels during the war years. Most of the Gloucester fleet was fitted with motors during the early 1920s. The Lunenburgers delayed longer but few if any unpowered schooners were built there after 1930. Dory fishing out of Nova Scotian ports persisted until 1963 but the schooners were all fully-powered by then, with only riding sails.

That "Plan No. 1" does show a very long boom! Jensen has the main boom of Bluenose II at 80 ft 11 in. I don't seem to have authoritative measurements for the original's spars. What is different about the existing schooner, compared to most "replicas", is that she was built to the same plans and by some of the same men as her predecessor. That doesn't mean that everything was identical but comparing photographs suggests that the rigs were/are very similar. 405 mm LOA representing 143 feet suggests a scale of 1:108. 80 mm beam representing 27 feet (which is Jensen's figure) suggests 1:103. Trevor

I can't tell you the scale of your model but Bill Roué's own typescript specs for the original design say "about" 141 feet LOA. "Yogi" Jensen's plans of Bluenose II say 143 ft. In either case, those are the length of the hull, from stem to taffrail -- nothing to do with spars. You should be able to get a pretty good estimate of scale from that. As to your: "modern photos of the 'Bluenose II' show this gaff ending before the ship's wheel (no doubt a safety modification)" -- I don't think her rig has been reduced. You may be confusing her main gaff, which does not reach the taffrail when lowered and stowed, with her main boom, which projects much further. Trevor

I am honoured to have you along for the voyage. Trevor As your signature block reminds us that "Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen", I'll add that horses do too. And so do sailing prams.

You are very welcome! And, if you can make as good a job of your Mosquidobit as you have of Endeavour, she will be just wonderful.

Round 1, Step 5 ... as in my first round on the pram but Step 5 of its kit instructions. Before I begin: Apologies for the large size of the images. I have reduced the file size but I don't know how to stop the MSW software from filling the page! I wasn't supposed to start for a few more days but I've run out of dye for the leatherwork project that I should finish before starting on this model. Until I can get back into the city for more, here's a very good way to fill my time! Rather than get stuck in to the transoms, however, I've prepared the building board. To my eye, the most serious gap in the banks-dory kit's instructions is their lack of any emphasis on the critical importance setting up the building board and moulds accurately and carefully. That's OK for me. I've read through enough guidance on full-size boatbuilding to have the requirement hammered into my skull: If you start off with even a minor error, it will grow as the build proceeds until it ruins the whole. Working through build logs on MSW reinforced that lesson but in a bad way. It was sad to see so many efforts fail almost before they began, because enthusiastic people starting their first model weren't told to take care of the initial set-up. The pram's instructions do nothing to fill that void. Other people's dory build logs did offer some ways of getting the set-up straight and square, so I tried those. They worked for me and I have repeated them for the pram. First step was to strike a centreline, with a sharp pencil. That's the centre of the boat-to-be, not necessarily of the building board, so it's drawn from the centre of the bow notch to the centre of the stern one. Next, with set square and ruler, I drew perpendiculars at the mould slots: When I did that with the dory, I found some slots nice and square, some skewed left and some skewed right. This time, the forward slot was very nearly square but the after one noticeably off. However, both were too narrow to take the tongues of the moulds. While filing the after slot wider, I worked down the after edge of one side and the forward end of the other, fixing that problem. So far so good. Next, I took out the two moulds and marked their centrelines too. Then I traced around one side of one mould, flipped it over and traced the other side: My first effort only proved that I'm not good at drawing centrelines. After checking and adjusting, the mould is confirmed as nicely symmetrical. No problem there. The instructions say not to worry about the char on the moulds but other people have found that it marks wet planks when they are laid on for bending. As I'm aiming for a clear finish, I sanded off the worst of the char, then re-checked for symmetry. Still OK. Next check was for the mould centreline to match the building-board line, when the mould is in its slot. One was good, the other not: Out of focus on the critical point but you can see that slot and tongue are quite markedly off. That only needed a few strokes of a file but they will make all the difference later. A few build logs for the pram have mentioned that the kit's building board isn't stiff enough. I cut up the outline of the sheet from which the board came and glued two longitudinals to the board's underside. Maybe those are optional but I also put cross pieces where they will support the transom holders. I don't see how those could be firm enough without some support beneath. The end results looks like: The dory's moulds were also the model's frames and so had to come free from the building board when the planking was finished. The pram's instructions for its moulds likewise say "Simply slot them in place" but there's no reason to be so cautious as no part of the model gets glued to the moulds. I glued them down, so adding to the stiffening of the set-up. Each centreline was carefully aligned, the moulds pressed fully down to eliminate any sideways misalignment and their fore-and-aft squareness checked with a mechanic's square. Unlike my dory's moulds, both of the pram's went in nicely square, without adjustment. To keep them that way, I resorted to the Lego-blocks-and-masking-tape method that had worked for me last time: Note the slight gap under the mould. I had to remove the Lego after taking those pictures, press the mould down more firmly and repeat the squaring up. The bow transom holder went in straightforwardly. As others have found, the slot in the building board was too wide but a sliver of business card filled the gap and pressed the centre of the holder almost exactly onto the marked centreline: Also like others, I broke the stern transom holder while extracting it from its sheet. The problem seems to be that the laser cuts are very narrow and the sheet rather thick. As I tried to push the holder free, after successfully cutting its tabs, it split along the grain. Another time, I would cut where I have drawn a red line, then extract and discard the piece in the slot, after all was removed from the sheet: With two pieces of scrap glued on as butt straps, whittled away from any obstruction of the slot for the transom, then sanded to just reach the top of the building board, the whole thing was glued in place and will be much stiffer and stronger than the kit's intended arrangement: Speaking of the two transom holders, the instructions say "Only glue the bow one in!" but there's no need to remove the transom from its holder until the pram comes off its building board and, at that point, I'll simply cut away one or both holders. And that's it for today. Judging from what others have found, I'll need to add shims to the building board to stabilize the transoms but those must wait until I have something to stabilize! Otherwise: Step 5 completed.

Hi Mark, It looks to me that you have four different versions. Hard to be sure from the limited amount showing in your screenshot but that looks like it may have come from a scan of the original draughting by the English shipwrights who took her lines off in whichever dockyard she was sent to. Its layout, colouring etc. looks like draughts prepared for the Navy Board. I would suggest that that is the only fully authoritative source, though the others may be very useful in suggesting ways of filling gaps. Your goelette (which, for the benefit of others who may read this, is simply French for "schooner", though used for some other kinds of vessel too) drawing is dated 1836, so presumably a copy of the English draught. Maybe something prepared for Admiral Paris' study of ship types? Your middle illustration is Howard Chapelle's, of course, with his usual degree of interpretive reconstruction. Chapelle chose to call his drawing "Lynx" (probably because he was most interested in her pre-capture origins) and the French used "Musquidobit", which would have been the name on the draught in the Admiralty collection, but I'd suggest that both show the same vessel at the same point in her career: When she reach England after her capture (though the original may include indications of planned modifications). I doubt that her lines were taken off at any other time. Then there's the kit version, much simplified to aid construction. If my guesses are right, then the prototype's planking ran to a wing transom just below the deck. (That's the timber shown in section in your screenshot and cut by your red circle.) There was then a counter that swept aft, across the head of the post ("sternpost", for those who like tautologies) and included a helm port for the rudderhead to pass through. Then, above deck level, the stern of the vessel was closed off by a transom, comprising a combination of a decorative elliptical shape and a practical squared one. [Note the dual meanings of "transom", one referring to a thwartships structural timber spanning the post, the other a more-or-less flat construction forming the outer shape of the hull, where squared off aft!] Maybe even crude drawings will help: Red indicates the (structural) transoms, seen in section where they cut the midline of the hull, green marks the post, blue the rudder and rudderhead, yellow the counter and purple the (external) transom. The dark shadow in the middle of the stern view of the counter is the helm port, with the rudderhead passing through. That's a much more developed, much prettier stern than the one shown in the kit-instructions drawing. It would also be a good bit for complicated to build. Trevor

I'd like to lay claim to the prototype, based on her name and my location. Sadly (for me), the name had little to do with the place and the schooner nothing at all: She could not have safely approached any closer than Cape Jeddore. The Admiralty just had a penchant for naming schooners after rivers in what were then called the "British Provinces". "Mosquidobit" at the time, spelt "Musquodoboit" now but pronounced "Musk-a-dah-bit" -- and only known as "Mosquito Bite" in jest, however apt that version may be. Trevor

I can't say what sizes came with your kit but full-size banks-dory beckets and painters were 2-inch diameter. That's 4.2 mm at the scale of your Midwest dory. If that sounds excessive (and it should!), it was 2-inch when fitted. By the time that the beckets had been broken and worn on the hooks of the dory tackles, during a season of fishing, there was much, much less left to take the weight of the boat when hoisted aboard.

Your build will be interesting to watch, Palmerit. And I agree that photos of full-size banks dories will help. One of Capt. Kelso's gave me the idea of how to add a mast step to my version of the Model Shipway's kit. Looking at them again now, I am struck by the "snub nose" appearance where everything comes together at the top of the stem. I chose to give mine a more elegant stemhead but the stubby look is more realistic: More robust when banging against the side of the schooner and less likely to get hooked up when the dories are stacked. In their 1887 account of the "salt bank" cod fishery, Goode and Collins even made an obscure mention of a boot heel being nailed on -- bit like the old tractor tires that could once be seen on the bows of tugs! There are lots of other photos of modern dories available on the WWW. The Lunenburg Dory Shop (https://www.doryshop.com) is a good place to start. You could even come to Nova Scotia for a week and join in the building of a full-size one! In contrast, photographs of the real thing in use in the banks fisheries are harder to come by. John Clayton made a few trips to sea around 1950, and has left us a large collection of images. Many were published in John Garland's 1985 "Adventure: Last of the Great Gloucester Dory-Fishing Schooners" (with at least one later edition). Before that, Frederick Wallace made a few trips on Nova Scotian schooners pre-1914. A selection of his photographs are in M. Brook Taylor's "A Camera on the Banks" (Goose Lane Editions, Fredericton 2006).

Robin, You seem to be asking for three rather different books and I doubt you'll find them all combined under one set of covers. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm guessing that what you want most is a book of tips on how to rig a model so that it looks right, given that reproducing full-size practices is impossible at 1:64 (or even 1:12). I've seen lots of books that purport to give that advice but never one that I found satisfactory. Then again, I haven't seen David Antscherl's, so don't take my negativity as any comment on other people's recommendations of that. The second topic is knots, rope work, marlin-spike seamanship and the whole lore of pre-synthetic cordage. Far and away the best single volume on that is undoubtedly Ashley's -- as others have said. A first read of the opening chapters will set you on course, while you can keep checking back for the details of any and (almost) every knot you may ever wish for. Brion Toss' book, that Peter named, is also excellent but more of guide to applying the alternatives than on the bits of knowledge to be applied (which is where Ashley's comes in). Both books are oriented towards full-size, not scale, practice. The third thing is a book on the particular kind of vessel that you are modelling. In your case, later 18th Century English warships (if I understand you correctly), I'd second the suggestion of Lees' book, which was based on a lot of very careful research and is especially well presented. From there, you could step to contemporary textbooks (likely meaning Steel's works) and beyond to archival records of your particular vessel. But Lees would be my recommendation for a starting point. However, you asked for one book and we (or at least me) are offering a minimum of three!

That's the one. See the previous page (Ashley's #3162 to 3164) for a better idea of how it went around a spar in full-size.

Your illustrations look like two rope-stropped blocks that share the same strop, which is made long enough to pass around the spar. I don't know whether there is a name for that arrangement. Ashley illustrated one version of it as "span blocks" for stuns'l halliards (his #3175) but it's not clear whether he meant the name for that one application or for any paired blocks surrounding a spar. All of his blocks secured to spars, whether with one block or two (and all for full-size vessels, of course), had the strop with two ends, each with an eyesplice, while a lashing held the two eyes together around the spar. At scale, you would presumably make a loop, slide it over the end of the spar. then fit the two blocks and tighten up with a seizing by each block. Darcy Lever showed something similar but with hearts, not blocks with sheaves, for bowsprit shroud collars. I dare say the other contemporary authorities showed it too.

Thanks, Palmerit! I avoid Amazon unless I know exactly what I intend to buy. They bombard me with irrelevant ads, then confuse me with the mass of dubious alternatives. The other day, I tried to get acid flux for soldering stainless steel. I was showered with listings for cheap, Chinese products that had "stainless steel" in their titles but were normal flux, not the special acidic stuff. Amazon did sell the proper thing but I had to find a manufacturer and the right product name, then go back into Amazon. Even then, the alternatives on offer were the wrong kind. I get some useful tools in the local hardware stores, though the smallest they sell are at the upper end of size for ship models. Next is the one local hoppy shop (Great Hobbies -- a Canadian chain, I think), then Lee Valley. Its local outlet is awkwardly placed for me, on the other side of Halifax Harbour. Beyond those, it's internet orders with shipping costs often more than the items I am buying. But that's the price to be paid for living in this corner of paradise!

Preaching to the choir here, but my initial step was to read right through the instructions, underlining key points. Looking at other people's build logs, I get the impression that some got rather lost amongst the wording and, in retrospect, I can understand why. The only full-size boat I ever built was a plywood kayak but I've been maintaining and studying boats for most of my life (even owned a traditional lapstrake hull at one time). With that background, even a first read-through made enough sense to put the whole build into shape in my head. I figure that will be a big help going forward. Maybe I'll be able to communicate some of it as this log unfolds. Next, I worked through every build log for this kit that has already been posted on MSW. I've always seen a lot of value in the adage: "Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself". More positively, those logs contain a lot of very good ideas from a lot of people -- most of whom were learning as they went along, strangely enough, rather than those more experienced dipping in with aid and suggestions. As I went through, I noted the good ideas, special challenges and possible solutions to them, all scribbled into spare space in the kit instructions. The end result looks something like this: img20250303_14125545.pdf I didn't even try to keep records of who had contributed each bright idea, so I'll apologize once for all but I won't be able to acknowledge you individually when I use your techniques. Nobody else could follow my notes and I won't be making a fair copy as some sort of improved instruction booklet, even if I had any right to something so presumptuous. At each step of the model construction, however, I'll merge my notes with the text offered by the kit designer. In a sense, I'll be building with the combined weight and experience of MSW at my back. And that's encouraging when taking that first leap into the unknown. I'll try to explain what I've done in this log. Then everyone will be able to see what a mess I've made of it! Now: Time to order a bunch of tools. Lee Valley does such a lovely line of miniatures, just right for shaping those pesky gains in the plank ends! Trevor

I am one of the many working my way through the Model Shipways beginner's series. There were already many and excellent build logs for the banks dory and I had nothing to add to those, until it came to scratch-building the fishing gear. I doubt that anyone will want to follow me down that path, so I did not prepare a log for that build. Now it's time for the pram and I think that, this time, I will have something to contribute. If nothing else, I can offer a sailor's perspective. I'm not the only one here who can do that, but I see that some people come to the kit without experience of small, traditionally rigged boats. That can be limiting, considering the abbreviated (not too say "deficient") instructions. It will be a little while, maybe as much as a couple of weeks, before I put craft knife to basswood. However, I have started preparations, so this is probably the right time to start a log. First, I figure that it's a good idea to have a vision of where you want to end up before starting out. I may be unique but the dory meant something to me, emotionally, and was always more than a learning and building exercise -- though it was that too. In contrast, I can't feel much affection for the pram. I can and do love small, traditional boats but I love them in full-scale, for sailing. I just don't feel much interest in them as subjects for modelling. Maybe I will one day scratch-build a miniature of my own pride-and-joy (a Drascombe Longboat, if anyone cares) but I just can't get excited about recreating another man's recreational toy. So the pram kit will be learning exercise only, for me. I'm not aiming for any embellishments, just a stand-alone display model. That's a shame in a way as 1:12 is a common dollhouse scale, and those so inclined could dress up a finished pram with any number of accessories (wine bottles keeping cool under the sternsheets, perhaps?), as well as figurines of humans and their pets. That's not for me, though. Still, there's no denying that the prototype is a pretty little thing -- much prettier than the plywood pram that was my first boat, a lifetime ago. So I aim to emphasize her prettiness in a finished model. To meet its objectives, my dory needed a good thick coat in a shade still known in this part of the world as "dory buff", but it hurt to hide all the woodwork that I had sweated over under that first coat of primer! So I aim to give the pram a clear finish, which means that she has to be built without glue stains or filler (save for a little white glue and sawdust mix, if necessary). That will add to the challenge and hence to the learning experience. Or I hope so. Enough preliminaries. Next: Preparatory steps. Trevor

Coming to this late, as I'm catching up on build logs before starting my pram. One point that I won't remember to note in my own build log, so I'll put it here for whatever help it may be to others: I don't think that's a notch for the tiller. I think it's intended for sculling the boat (with one oar) or maybe steering with an oar when sailing in shallow water. If it was for the tiller, it would either have to be in line with the axis of pintles and gudgeons or else much wider, to leave space for the swing of the tiller, side to side. That's a small point but I've seen one or two build logs where the rudder was mounted low, so that the tiller fitted in the notch. The rudder needs to be high enough for the tiller to sweep, side-to-side above the transom. Trevor

Chis, One last contribution for tonight: I think your tiller is wonderful! The kit-supplied one is a disgrace and I have been wondering how to improve on it. Your version is an inspiration. For what it may be worth to others facing the same challenge, here is another alternative (this time at full-size):

I see that said too but I can't think why. Brass should not be used in any structural role in a boat (though many a manufacturer of boats as small as the pram does cut corners with brass screws!). However, the highest quality wood boats have a lot of bronze fastenings and fittings. Brass and bronze each come in many varieties, though each of the two families tends to look quite different from the other after a bit of marine corrosion. But, if you are building a model of a boat in as-new condition, brass is a better substitute for bronze than basswood is for pine or oak. Yet we opt for practicality in our wood-type choices. Anyway, if a modern, recreational wooden boat didn't have bronze fittings and fastenings, they would be shiny stainless steel, not blackened iron. So, feel free to expose lovely brass on a model pram or paint it silvery. But I can't see any point in blackening it. Trevor