Kenchington

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

Looking good so far! If you leave that char on the moulds, it will stain the planks -- or it would if you bent wet planks over the moulds. Maybe your bending approach will eliminate that. Even sanding almost-all char off mine, I still had staining. But that's not much of a problem if you plan on painting the interior. The bow-transom bevels on the pram are a nightmare but you can slightly adjust the shape of each before laying a plank on it. I'd say that you are good to go for now. The point that you should probably fix before going any further are the steps on the stern transom, between the bevels for the bottom planks and the one for the keel plank. Those need sharp right-angles. Your image shows slight curves, which would push the bottom planks outwards, preventing a tight joint. Trevor

And thank you too, Druxey! At the moment, I feel more depressed but I dare say I will get over that. If nothing else, I get to play at sailmaking next and that is very much more to my liking. Trevor

Thank you, JacquesC! I think its saving grace is the rake of the transom, hiding the mess from view. Trevor

Step 39: Pintles and hanging the rudder In my last, I suggested that the build might go better if the gudgeon straps were long enough to wrap around the bits of tube. For the matching pintles, that is exactly what the instructions show. Progress! Or not. For a metal strap to extend around half the circular section of 1/16-inch tube and reach out, on either side, to just contact the solid surface that the tube is lying on (in the current build: to reach the leading edge of the rudder), that strap would have to be 4.081mm (to the nearest micron!). {That's pi times half the diameter of the tube, plus twice the half diameter.} The shorter of the two photo-etched straps (and I have no idea why they are different lengths) is less than 5.5mm between its nail holes. So, wrapping the strap around the tube, as per the instructions, would place the centres of the nail holes about 0.7mm from the edge of the rudder, at best. That's clearly not viable. I can only assume that the kit's pintles are to be built up the same way as the gudgeons (with the tube glued outside the strap) and not as shown in the instructions! Maybe the best advice to anyone following along would be to get some very thin brass stock and cut out much longer (and somewhat thicker) straps. I did not go that route. With the experience of the gudgeons behind me, I decided to fit the pintle straps to the rudder, then glue on the bits of tube (with epoxy, not CA). That worked. Not easily but it did work. I had intended to round the leading edge of the rudder, so letting the straps extend a bit further from the extreme edge. But then I figured that a broader flat surface would help when gluing on the bit of tube. As I had already extended the rounding of corners a bit too far, during the preliminary shaping of the rudder, I had to mount the lower pintle a little higher than intended, lowering the rudder a bit beyond the corner of the skeg. Not a problem, though I did re-shape the rudder a little so that the mistake would be a bit less visible and took the opportunity for a bit more tapering and shaping to improve hydrodynamic efficiency. Under Step 28, the initial shaping of the rudder, the instructions say "file shallow grooves on the edge of the rudder for the rudder pintles". I could not make sense of that at the time and left it alone. Part of the trouble was that I could think of a couple of reasons to groove the leading edge of a rudder near the pintles, requiring different depths of groove in different places. One purpose would be to make space (between the pintle's pin and the wood of the rudder) for the gudgeon -- all the more necessary if the design has the rudder extending forward of its axis of rotation and so closes the gap between rudder and hull. That can make sense full-size but seemed a bit excessive at 1:12. Another reason might be to set the pintle straps into the wood of the rudder, thus producing a flush surface. Nice in full-size work but absurd at scale, especially when the strap is a thin bit of photo-etched metal. Yet, looking again at the instructions, there seems no doubt that that is exactly what they call for -- even though they also intend the the tubes, rather than the straps, contact the leading edge of the rudder. I simply ignored the call for grooves. Otherwise, the first task was bending a strap into a flat-bottomed U-shape, with right-angled corners. One side is easy: Hold down the strap where you want the angle, slip a knife-blade under and bend. How to do the other side and have the two nail holes lined up to take the same nail? Push, pull, walk away, walk back, push ... and repeat. But I got there in the end. Then mark for the hole, drill and pass a nail through one side of the strap, through the rudder and ... go back to shaping the strap to better align the nail holes. {The instructions avoid some of that trouble by calling for the pintles to be glued in place, with what it calls "bolts" reduced to little more than nail-head decoration (separate ones on each side and not extending through the thickness of the rudder.} Still, it worked in the end, so I could snip off excess nail, lay the rudder on a vice as a substitute for an anvil, give the nail-end a couple of taps and all was good! When fitting the second pintle-strap, there is a need for care in matching the distance between them to that between the two gudgeons, where they sit on the transom. But that did not prose any difficulty. Next, I cut off lengths of tube. None of the instruction's complexity this time. I just laid the tube on the scale marked on my cutting board, set a knife blade 3/32 from the end (by eye) and rolled the tube under the blade until it cut through, then reamed the hole a bit with a mounted needle. Made three of them, so I had a spare without backing up. Dropped the three in acetone to degrease and scraped the surface of the straps with a knife blade, to clean those up and give the glue something to grip. After the disaster of making the gudgeons with CA, I went to the hardware store for some 5-minute epoxy. Paid a bit more for name-brand product but found that one of the two components wouldn't flow. I poked around and got some out but the two evidently did not flow evenly as the glue did not set in 5 minutes, nor 5 hours. (It did harden overnight.) Before discovering that problem, I put a drop of epoxy on each pintle strap, positioned a bit of tube on the glue and then added more epoxy on each side: When I looked again, one tube-bit had fallen away under its own weight, so removed that, cleaned up and left everything for the night. Today, I returned to the fray, with the spare bit of tube and enough epoxy to do a thousand model pintles -- which much increased the odds of getting the right mix of the two glue components: Once that had had much more than 5 minutes to set, I cut away some of the excess epoxy, gave the rudder a final sanding and painted on tung oil, to match the rest of the pram. The instructions expect that the pintle pins will be pieces of the supplied 1/32-inch brass rod. I figured that there was zero chance of my having exactly aligned the four bits of tube (two on gudgeons, two in pintles), so even if I could get the rod into each tube, it would then bind. Instead, I dropped a 0.6mm nail into each pintle tube -- 1/32 being about 0.8mm, I got a little scope for misalignments. Holding rudder to model boat and getting nails into gudgeon holes was fiddly but nothing too bad. Then a tiny dab of CA on each hail-head and the rudder was finally attached! What amazes me even more is that the rudder actually turns on its hangings. I am sure that that was more luck than skill but I'm not complaining! The whole gudgeon/pintle/rudder saga has certainly been the most awkward part of this build so far. All I can say is that it is done (and, for those facing their own pram builds, that means it can be done by someone learning ship modelling). Trevor

Something is weird. My kit had the various knees labelled by the laser-cutter. I can't give you definite answers because my sheet has been cut up as I needed scrap for various bits and pieces. However, I think that the two knees you had glued to the transoms before taking your photo are the stern quarter knees. The stern transom knee is the one with the transverse hole laser-cut through it. (A hole that has no known purpose!) You seem to have two copies of that. The pair of knees at the far left of your image are the ones that go on top of the midship thwart. The bow transom knee is next in from those two, under the mould labelled "25". The pair of knees just above where you took out the bow transom are the bow quarter knees. But you should double check all that! Trevor

A nice, tidy build! Are you moving on to the Norwegian pram next? Trevor

So sorry to hear about Sierra. It is unbearable to have to say goodbye to a companion, but it does get easier over time. Sebastian is fortunate to have found such a good home. Trevor

Step 38: Rudder gudgeons A very, very frustrating day, trying to get started on the serious (for this kit) metalwork. The pram, like most sailing dinghies, has two pintle/gudgeon pairs linking the rudder to the hull. The two gudgeons are fastened to the transom, the two pintles to the rudder. Today was the gudgeons. Each is a combination of a strap (photo-etched brass) and a short length of 1/16-inch brass tube, cut from a supplied piece. When I cut some of that tube for the "hex nut" on the bow eyebolt, I just cut it cold with a knife and it went well. This time, I followed instructions and annealed the tube first to make it more readily workable. A new mini butane torch working over an old ceramic tile saw the end of the tube red-hot in seconds. Quenched it in a coffee mug of cold water and all seemed well. Trouble was the tube had become so malleable that it squashed as I cut it. Would have been much, much better to skip the annealing. Next up, the instructions call for drilling two 1/16 holes in a piece of 3/32 wood, inserting the two off-cuts of tube and filing them down until flush with the wood, thus producing two little bits of tube of equal length. Ever try inserting a fragment of 1/16 anything into a 1/16 hole? Not a good plan. So, ream out the hole a bit and insert brass tube. Start filing and find that basswood is so soft that the fragment of tube enlarges its hole and falls onto a diagonal. Grip excess tube with fine forceps and try filing again. Discard the basswood and just use forceps ... Eventually, I got to a good approximation, at which point the four pieces looked like: Next task is to attach one bit of tube to each strap. The sensible way would be soldering but I have almost zero experience with solder and this was definitely not the time to start practicing, not when I only had one of each kind of strap. Next best might well be epoxy glue but the instructions call for CA, so I went with that. Bad mistake. Before applying glue, the instructions do sensibly call for careful cleaning of the metal. They recommend fine sandpaper. On those tiny pieces ??? Maybe somebody could do it. I couldn't. I gave them a bath in acetone instead (more exactly in nail-polish remover). That worked, so long as the acetone was given plenty of time to evaporate after removal of the brass pieces. OK, so it was then time to pass some 1/32 brass rod through one fragment of tube, place it on the strap, add a drop of CA on each side and leave it to set. Sounds lovely. Except that the tube needs to be centred on the strap, while its hole is perpendicular to the long axis of the strap. Then it has to stay there while enough CA is applied but not too much. And the 1/32 rod has to be removed before it gets glued in the tube, without disturbing the tube. My first one went surprisingly well. The second needed three attempts, then the tube came away after the strap was glued to the transom. Before that disaster, I did get to have two reasonably presentable gudgeons (one seen here with a drill bit temporarily inserted): The gudgeon with short straps goes on the pad earlier placed on the lower transom, just above the keel plank. With a drop of CA to hold it in place and an inserted drill bit (all of my remaining 1/32 brass rod being bent by then) to serve as a guide for aligning the hole with the centre of both skeg and sculling notch, it should have been easy. It wasn't. However ... muddled through in the end. Then drilled one of the fastener holes in the strap and into the pad, clipped short a nail, inserted it, did the other and added a touch of low-viscosity CA to keep the nails in place. Giving time for the glue to set, inserted a drill bit through the upper gudgeon and into the lower one, to make sure that the holes were aligned. Slid the upper gudgeon along the drill bit to get the right height (using the pintles' laser-marked positions on the rudder for a measure of spacing), marked that, aligned the drill bit to the centre of the notch: Then touched some CA to the pencil mark, brought the gudgeon into place, pressed it there for the glue to bite, tried to remove the drill bit ... and the gudgeon left its glue. Cleaned up. Tried again. And again. Finally got the strap in position by the expedient of having the drill bit rip the tube from the strap! At that point, I decided to at least get the strap fastened down. So ... how to drill through the brass (enlarging the etched holes enough for the nails to pass) and into the transom without going right through the wood? How to both snip a nail short enough that it wouldn't go right through and get the super-short snipped end into the drilled hole? I know I couldn't do it. Solution: Drill right through, push nail right through (after dipping the head in CA to hold it in place), then snip off the ends of the nails and file them down flush with the inboard face of the transom: If anyone asks, the gudgeon is through-bolted to the transom, with countersunk bolt heads on the inboard end and dome nuts on the outboard. That's my story anyway! Then it was clean up the loose bit of tube (again!), roll the drill bit between margarine-coated fingers to give it enough grease that the CA wouldn't stick, insert the drill, line everything up, drops of CA on either side, gently pull on drill, twist, pull, twist and pull ... and the tube was firmly glued to the drill bit, not the gudgeon strap! Clean up that mess, apply another drop of CA, then simply place the fragment of tube with forceps, figuring that I will compensate for misalignment when fitting pintles to rudder but ... Lo and behold, I can see light through both gudgeon holes together! They are not perfectly aligned but I may yet produce a rudder that actually moves on its gudgeons: Might have been a whole lot worse, though the end result owes more to luck than to skill on my part. I dare say that I am ham-fisted and that other builders of this kit have done better but this step in the build does seem overly challenging. There ought to be a better way. (Maybe straps long enough to wrap around the tube? Perhaps duplicate straps for when someone messes up a first attempt?) To anyone reading this log before their own build, I would say do not use CA glue when building your gudgeons. At least use epoxy and if you have the skills (or are willing to step aside from the pram and develop the ability), then solder instead. Maybe I will do better when I get to the rudder. Trevor

Best of luck in DC, Mark! Clearing out an elderly parent's house is always a huge task and not to be envied.