Kenchington

Completed all planking, hence instruction steps through to #11 (aside from a bit of trimming and tidying). Today's effort began with releasing the two ends of one plank that had drifted out of position yesterday. Those went back on with no real trouble, except that the bow end got the reverse error and ended slightly too high off the building board. I doubted I could do any better with a third attempt, so left it as it was. Then it was on to the sheerstrakes. The moulds and stern transom needed little attention before providing properly aligned surfaces for those last planks to lie against. The bow transom did need some serious sanding to bring the bevel for the sheerstrake into line with the bevel on the mis-positioned 2nd strake. That gave the pram a slightly asymmetric transom -- hopefully not noticeable, but time will tell. As that change moved the location of one sheerstrake away from the building board, the other had to be narrowed by a millimetre or so, to keep their upper edges at the same height in the finished hull. Aft, I found (as have others before me) that both planks rose too high up (i.e. towards the building board) the sides of the stern transom. Holding the two planks together (for symmetry), I narrowed them by nearly 1/10 inch (call it 2mm), by sanding, running that width-reduction out to nothing over 5 inches (125mm) along a straight line. After assembling everything, I see that I have produced a very slight hump in the sheerline. That will be easy to correct later. Close inspection showed that the starboard sheerstrake did not need any gains cut. The bevel on the 2nd strake on that side made a smooth surface with the bevel for the sheerstrake on each transom. In contrast, the port side did need deep gains, both fore and aft. I matched them with short rabbets in the ends of the 2nd strake, worked out of its bevels. The gain+rabbet at the bow seem to have fit very well, the stern pair maybe less so, though I doubt that any gap will be visible. What I should have done at that point was to soak the sheerstrakes in boiling water again, get them exactly into their final positions and live them to dry overnight -- probably meaning two nights, as it would be hard to get both into position at the same time, without using glue. After rebounding, they might have fit comfortably and easily. What I actually did, however, was force each one into position, with an elaborate complex of clamping tools. One wrinkle that would have been needed either way built on a suggestion gleaned from a previous MSW build log: I inserted Lego blocks between build board and strake to hold it up against the pressure of the rubber bands. As the strake curved towards the board at each end, the blocks could be slid a little, fore or aft, until they held the strake at just the right height: It's not yet quite time to remove the boat from its board: I still have to trim the sheerstrakes where they project beyond the transoms, then fit a skeg and two bilge runners to the outside of the hull. But that's for the morning. At least I have the hull shape complete! Trevor

Beautiful job on the stem to bottom-planks joint! The transom/knee/bottom should be fine once planked over, but it does confirm the worry I had earlier. But those frames! I am so glad that the Model Shipways dory had frames secured to a building board. I do not envy you having to sand and bevel with them standing up like that. Trevor

What would we do without our spouses! Great that you could so swiftly correct the trouble. But it is good to know that the kit manufacturer was not that badly out with one bulkhead. That would have shaken my confidence in all kits. Trevor

Your Bluenose looks lovely, Doug! I'll have to build one some day. Of the model for sale, though: The trouble is, if you are going to portray some evolution in progress, you need to get it right. A gaff sail has to be hoisted with the gaff horizontal, until the throat halliard is belayed. Otherwise, part of the weight of the spar bears down on the gaff jaws and jambs them against the mast. (Been there, done that!) Then the topsails can't be (or at least: shouldn't be) run up to the topmast heads until the gaffs are up, nor the fisherman's staysail begun to be set while the other sails are part way. Errors like that make a model look as wrong as if the anchors were carried on the stern, a fishing schooner was given a winged keel or ... In short: Represent a vessel in a formal, static pose and you only need get the technicalities of hull, rig and gear correct. Portray something more active and you'll need to study how the prototype was handled too. Trevor

Thanks, Mark! But I can't see how a little pram is as challenging as recreating Mosquidobit from the Lynx kit. Your skills are well beyond mine.

I don't see anything but that looks a very big offset to be an error in the kit's manufacture. Is there any other part to go in that might explain it -- structure around a hatchway, perhaps, or support for a mast or something? You have probably read through the instructions and checked everything but, if not ...

Continued progress today but not much to say about it. I released the after end of the garboard that had got misplaced, then glued it where it should be. The kit instructions do hint at the difficulty of getting the planks into place and I know that other builders have had similar problems. Mostly, it is a matter of care and especially careful placement of clamps. I continued custom cutting of the gains. The two second-strake planks (one each starboard and port) barely needed anything at all at the bow but both needed deep gains at the stern. Then it was on to gluing of first one, then the other. The first of the two slipped low at both ends -- by much less than 1mm but still enough to produce gaps at the transoms. I will fix those in the morning. Final step was to put on the sheerstrakes, to dry overnight: All being well, I will finish planking tomorrow and maybe complete the external work, then release the boat from the building board at last! Trevor

Looks like they take the fore tack to a block on the end of the cathead:

Ouch!

Bumpkin: Townsman's insulting term for an unsophisticated countryman, without whose labour the townsfolk would have starved. Possibly from a Dutch word with similar meaning. Modern Dutch has Boerenkinkel, literally "Farmers kink" or "twist". Boomkin, commonly pronounced Bumkin: Literally "baby boom" or "child of a boom", used of a spar projecting from the hull of a boat or ship. And yet both Smythe and Paasch, in the 19th Century, offered the "p" spelling as an alternative for the nautical meaning. Falconer and Blanckley, in the 18th, did not.

Leatherwork project completed yesterday, so I could turn back to the pram today. Before tackling the gains, I tidied up the moulds, the bevels of the bottom planks and those on the transoms which, together, must take the garboards. At first, I thought that I would have to sand a lot off one of the moulds but then realized another detail of the geometry of this build: There is no problem with the mould (shown below in tan) projecting beyond the edge of the bottom plank (orange), provided that the garboard (brown) sits on the bottom plank's bevel. The remaining gap (blue) will be an air space. The same will be true between the garboard and second strake or between the second strake and the sheerstrake. However, that is not true at the transoms, where the blue would a route for water to enter. So the moulds can (and do) project beyond the edges of the planks, before angling away to take the next plank, but the transom bevels must be sanded until they meet the edge of the previous plank. (Then the upward step shown above in orange is accommodated by the gain cut in the brown plank.) Maybe everyone else saw that long ago but it came as new understanding to me! With the existing structure of the model as good as I could get it, the time had come to nerve myself to cut gains in the planks. In the end, I hardly used the miniature chisels but (almost) only the little blocking plane. I did not attempt to follow the kit instructions, except in making each gain an inch in length, but rather custom shaped each one to suit the place where it had to fit. Each of the four was quite different in width and/or depth. At the bow, I could have carved away the garboards to nothing, so deepened the bottom-plank bevels instead. Only afterwards did I think of developing those bevels into rabbets (as Chapelle explained for full-size boat building). If I had to do it again, that is what I would do. With the bow-end gains cut, the point along the garboard where it would cross the stern transom could be found and marked, then the gain shaped, starting one inch back from there. As the gains can barely be seen, even with a magnifier, I did not attempt to photograph them. With the gains cut, it was time to glue a garboard into place, let that set, then glue the other one. I did not attempt to do both together. The instructions suggest gluing only from the bow back to the forward mould, letting that set, then doing the next length and so on. The trouble with that is that you may need to adjust the forward part of the plank a little in getting it to fit further aft. I glued and clamped, then glued further and clamped further etc., but did not wait for one length of glue to set before continuing. I did use a lot of pegs to ensure that the joint was tight, without placing too much pressure on any one point. I found that the clamped plank wanted to flare outwards, away from the moulds. Bands around those cured that tendency. Otherwise, all went well, except that the first garboard fitted drifted off position at the stern. I delayed fixing that in case I had a similar problem with the second one, when they could have been cured together. In practice, a clamp on the transom tamed the trouble: Tomorrow, I will let isopropanol work its magic and re-set half the length of the one plank. meanwhile, it is just nice to see a model begin to look like a boat! Meanwhile, I checked the two second-strake planks, which were nicely symmetrical, without the problem with the bevel line seen in other planks. So char could be cleared off, bevels shaped ... and the last task tonight was to wet those planks and mount them to dry overnight. More tomorrow.

Capt. Kelso, I saw your fabulous dory diorama while scanning build logs, before starting my own Model Shipways kit. Left me wishing I had a fraction of your skill at weathering! Since I don't, I went for a different representation. There's a couple of other aspects to the question that PqLear posed, though. For one thing, unless a ship is shown on the building ways, in dry dock or (for some) dried out on a beach somewhere, all realistic ship models should be waterline models. The underwater bodies of ships are simply not visible under normal circumstances (not even by SCUBA divers, as water is too opaque for an observer to take in a whole ship in one view). So, unless we are content with the waterline option (and few are), then any model can only be an unrealistic abstraction. That's even more true if we want to represent two or more ships, because those who operate real ships make sure to allow plenty of searoom between themselves and anyone they might collide with. Consider a squadron of five Jutland-era battleships steaming in line-ahead, with a cable-length between ships -- very close for ships at sea. The squadron needs nearly a mile of ocean, about 5 ft at even 1:1200 scale, so we either model single vessels separated from all others or else place them far too close together. 1:1200 enthusiasts often go for dioramas but, at larger scales, those are hardly practical for ships at sea and a ship in harbour rather loses her point: Ships are essentially seagoing. Then there is the problem of any static representation of the fluid medium. It can be done but it is not encouraging to most ship modellers. So we generally accept that our models cannot really look like their prototypes. That being so, presenting them as pristine piece of technology makes sense. Not that it diminishes the alternative option of weathering in any way. Secondly, we do have "traditions", or at least expectations, of a sort. Some 350 years ago, the "Navy Board" models set a standard that later generations have tried to emulate. Yet those models showcased the work of the shipwrights in the Royal dockyards. The early ones were not rigged (which would have emphasized the work of other men with other skillsets), nor were they armed -- guns being the responsibility of the Ordnance Board, not the Navy Board and certainly not the shipwrights. The ships were represented in pristine condition, for who would want to display their product in a damaged condition? So the gold-standard of ship models was set as a whole-hull, unweathered, unmanned (hence quite unrealistic) representation. Skipping forward to the 20th Century: Shipyards had enormous models of their prouder creations in their company offices, as advertisements. Naturally, those models showed the ship as the yard would wish it to be seen, with everything perfect and the whole of the hull represented. The passenger-liner companies used the characteristics of their ships in advertising too and had models built. Naturally, they showed everything in idealized form, for who would want to pay for tickets on a rust-bucket being tossed around on a stormy sea? I suspect that a desire to follow those precedents leads to a common (though not universal) expectation of what a ship model should be. Though I still wonder whether they touch something deeper in at least some of us. Trevor

I suspect that, in real real life (meaning excluding museum ships), ships rarely had all of their spars aloft but no sails bent at all. Why would anyone want the added maintenance burden of the rig, if there was no intention to get under way soon? Even if the higher yards were left crossed, much of the running gear would be sent down, if only to get it out of the wet. But a sailing ship laid up for more than a few weeks would be more likely to be stripped, at least of the gear needed to set the light-weather "flying kites". If the question is what would be done when a single sail was sent down, pending its replacement: Unfortunately, full-size practices have changed over time and sometimes have varied from sail to sail. To give just a few examples: Darcy Lever (in 1819) illustrated both a damaged course being lowered to the deck and its replacement hoisted up to the yard with the buntlines being the principal ropes used in both operations. Presumably, if a sail was to be replaced soon, the bunts would be left rove with both ends reaching the deck. On the other hand, he shows replacement topsails and topgallants send aloft as bundles. Whether the bunts were bundled up with the rest or attached after the sail was stretched along its yard was not stated. Brady (in 1849 and writing of warship practices) had all topgallants and higher sails bent to their yards on deck and sent aloft as whole units. Presumably, the bunts were tied off to the yard and rove through their blocks on the mast after everything was aloft and in place. Dana (in 1845 and more for merchant ships) repeats the notion of courses being sent up by their buntlines. He also mentions stopping the various lines to the shrouds -- probably topsail buntlines to the topmast shrouds, where they could be reached by a man in the top. Maybe that's a useful reminder that the real-life version was for practicality during a labour-intensive evolution, not for display to an outside audience. For the upper sails, he gives both Brady's bend-on-deck-and-send-aloft option and Lever's sending of the sail aloft as a bundle. Only for the latter does he say that the bunts (and other gear) should be attached after the sail is bent to its yard, meaning that they were left rove when there was no sail on the yard. "Eagle Seamanship", the USCG's manual for cadets aboard Eagle, has all square sails made up as though furled (hence sausage-shaped) while on deck, sent aloft like that and the bunts (and other gear) attached after the sail was bent to its yard. It does not say how they were arranged before the sail was brought to them. The one time that I had a share in changing a squaretail (aboard Stad Amsterdam in 2006), I think that's what was done, though my memory of it doesn't really stretch beyond the problems of getting the head of the sail stretched along the yard, with only human muscle for the pull. Not sure whether any of that will be helpful! Trevor

Weathering, sails but human figures too. Ships can't go to sea without people aboard and, even when in harbour, there is often an anchor watch, maybe people doing maintenance work, loading cargo or whatever. Yet most ship models are presented devoid of any human presence. When there are any figures, there tend to be one or two for an indication of scale, rather than the dozens or hundreds aboard the full-size prototype when she was in service. That's quite unlike plastic models of aircraft or military vehicles, which usually provide for a pilot in a cockpit, a tank-commander's head emerging for his turret or whatever. For any one ship model, those are matters of individual choice of the model builder, of course, with the complexities of the task being major considerations. Weathering is an art, sails are hard to represent realistically at scale, while creating miniature human figures (in appropriate clothing and postures) needs a whole other skill-set. Yet the presentation of ship models as miniature ships in pristine condition, with the underwater body visible (!) and nobody aboard, is so frequent that I have to guess that our choices are being shaped by our expectations --which amount to what PqLear called a "tradition"-- or maybe by something deeper in our psyche. "Untouched", yes: The essence of the ship in a pure, unsullied form. And yet any ship is, of course, the product of human hands and could not exist otherwise. To be human is to be a toolmaker (that's what sets us apart from other life on this planet) and throughout history, down to the 1940s, watercraft have been the most advanced tools made by man. Maybe capturing their unsullied essence in miniature meets some need in some of us? Maybe I am just over-thinking answers to a simple question! Trevor

Hi Mark, That plan (Chapelle's from "Search for Speed Under Sail") does have a counter, its shape where it crosses the centreline here marked in red: The German deck plan certainly looks nice but I wonder whether it is anything more than a re-interpretation of Chapelle's version, in "Baltimore Clipper". They all rely on the 1816 draught, prepared in Portsmouth, because there is nothing else specific to this one vessel. You have posted part of that draught and (as expected) it had internal arrangements shown on the longitudinal drawing. Whether it also had a deck plan, I cannot say, though I think that would have been unusual at the time. If not, all reconstructions must take the locations of hatches etc. along the midline of the deck and infer what, if anything, was placed outboard of those. Trevor

That's a good point, Allan. Contemporary accounts go on about catting and fishing bower anchors but nothing (that I know of) on how a sheet anchor was got outboard when needed in a hurry, how the spare bowers were got into their positions, a little abaft the best bowers, nor how the kedge and stream anchors were moved about for stowage. I suspect that the answers lie in experienced seamen being very inventive in how they used the many spars and tackles in a ship's rig. With a tackle from the foremast head, another from the end of the fore yard, plus the stay tackle (on the main stay) that was used when hoisting out the boats, heavy weights could likely be moved around, a bit the way that ships were loaded and unloaded using union purchases (back before the coming of the "box boats"). Not something to be done every day, perhaps, but anchors other than the best bowers, stream and kedge did not need to be moved every day. Somewhere, I have seen a series of engravings showing a vessel sent up the Adriatic to load large marble slabs from a quarry there. The artist showed how the rig was partially disassembled, then the spars and tackle arranged to get the heavy lumps of rock down from the hillside and onto the vessel. It was a lesson in the adaptability of the technology, when handled by men with knowledge and practical experience now lost to us. Trevor

Many years ago, I did a lot of book reviewing for a maritime-history journal. As they came out, the editor sent me each of the Anatomy of the Ship series that addressed sailing ships (not the ones on 20th Century warships). After a half-dozen of them, I had to ask him to stop as I couldn't give any of them a positive review and it didn't seem fair to the publisher to keep slamming the errors in the series. Some very skilled draughtsmen who are also enthusiasts for historical nautical technology have done their level best with those books and I don't like to put their efforts down. But the end results are commercial products, not academic tomes incorporating the expertise of multiple specialists. Use them, of course, and learn from them -- but my advice would be to not rely on them as some sort of ultimate, unchallengeable authority. Now, by trying to reproduce one particular detail in three dimensions, you have discovered an error in the Endeavour book that might easily have been missed until someone tried suspending a model anchor from a model cathead. So we now know that the book is wrong on that point, however right it is about other details. One thought: What if the bumkin went over the cathead, instead of under it? The cathead could be flat on the deck, such that the weight of the anchor was transferred more readily to the ship's structure. The bumkin, which does not need to bear anywhere near as great a load, could be arched over the cathead, such that its outer end is in the same place as in your present modelling, while leaving plenty of space for the cat-tackle falls to pass under the arch. That would need the least modification to the AotS draughting. Trevor

Ouch! I don't have specific drawings for Endeavour, so I must leave the solution to others, but I do see the problem. There must be a clear run for all parts of the cat tackle to lift the weight of the anchor. If any part rubbed across the bumkin, it would swiftly fail under tension. Worse, that tackle must remain clear of obstructions as the anchor is fished and its ring pulled aft. For all I know, the bumkins were unshipped when anchor work was going on. If not, either the bumkin or the cathead is in the wrong place on your model. When the anchor is down on the seabed, its cable must lead forward from the hawsehole, so between the stem and the forward bumkin shroud. So, once the anchor is up and suspended from the cathead, the cable must pass outboard of that shroud in reaching from the hawsehole to the anchor's ring. However, the cable would be slack then, so no problem with cable and shroud coming into contact. The bigger problem with the shrouds would be with the one angled outboard. Would it even be possible to pass the anchor between that and the ship's side? The geometry looks very tight. But without details that I don't have, I can't advise on how to solve the riddle! Trevor

Looking good!

Rounding up into the wind to drop anchor on the banks, headsails clawed down so she will lie head to wind, foresail and main still set and sheeted in hard, until the men have time to lower them properly? Looks technically correct to me! Trevor

Good to see you working on this! I finished my dory two weeks ago and am now progressing with the Norwegian pram. They are working for me as learning experiences, so I hope they will for you. A few points: First: Be careful when you take things out of the sequence in the instructions. That can be done but could get you into trouble at times. At least read through the booklet, cover to cover, so that you can figure out what steps, if made too early, might block others. Next: Yes, the stern cleat has to be wider at this stage. Later, both will be bevelled for the planks to lie against. The aft side of the transom will be narrowed, the forward side of the transom and aft side of the cleat will have the transom's existing width and the forward side of the cleat must be wider. You are on track so far! Third: You are OK with the position of stem and transom, relative to the bottom planks. (The instructions are not as clear as they might be. I put mine where you have and it worked out.) In truth, it may not matter that much as you will be sanding both areas to make a good fit for the garboards and it wouldn't be a big deal if you had to take off a little more of one or another piece. And lastly: If you haven't worked through the MSW build-logs for the dory kit, I would encourage you to study them all. I found a lot of wisdom there: Both the good ideas and the pitfalls to avoid. Best of luck with your build! Trevor

Thank you for the approval, Mark! My progress has slowed but not stopped. It's not only the gains that need attention but also the bottom-plank bevels, transom bevels and even the moulds -- all to be shaped so that the garboards fit nicely. I found that I could not so much as check what needs work while the garboards were straight, so last night I bevelled them, soaked them and set them to dry: They were looking nice by this morning, but I had a day in the city and have not yet proceeded further with them. I have been practicing at cutting gains too. It has gone much better than I expected, mostly because the grain of basswood is so agreeable. (Quite unlike the bloody-minded bit of sapele that I am trying to turn into a small table for my wife!) One example: As ever, it does pay to have the right tools: Yes, that's a standard cutting board with a one-inch grid marked. The chisel is great for making a first, careful cut, creating an edge for the blocking plane to run down. Then the plane develops the slope of the gain, while making it a straight slope. Those are Lee Valley miniatures. I suspect that they sell more as collectable novelties than for practical use, but they are ideal for this task. Now I have hope that I can justify the extravagance by using them on other models. My trip into the city yielded the dye needed for a leatherwork project that was always supposed to precede construction of the pram, so that must now take priority. My updates to this log will slow down but (hopefully) not stop. Trevor

That's a beautiful illustration, Alpayed! In my own defence, however, I'll just note that how gear was handled on a collier serving the regular trade down the coast from Newcastle to London and how it was handled on an ex-collier leaving the Cape for a long voyage into an unknown ocean were not necessarily one and the same. Given the prominence of Cook's voyages, I'd not be surprised if the officer's journals have been published. I wonder whether any of them happened to mention specific details? Trevor

Just one fish davit! One alone was awkward enough. Until a generation before the time you are representing, large ships had a long davit (as long as the ship's beam) that was stowed across the forecastle and lashed down. When in use, it was moved so that one end or the other projected far enough for its purpose. By the time of Endeavour, the much shorter davit that you have already modelled was preferred. In use, it was mounted on whichever did of the forecastle it was needed. Unfortunately, the near-contemporary seamanship manuals, like Darcy Lever's and Brady's, go on at length about how the davit was rigged for fishing an anchor, then go silent on what was done with it afterwards. Maybe somebody can come up with specific evidence. (Sometimes details can emerge from the oddest sources, such as an aside mention in a court-martial record. I've never gone looking that deeply for anything to do with fish davits.) All I can offer is surmise: The davit was big, awkward and heavy. Stowing it somewhere near where it was used but out of the way would be the first choice, though there were plenty of men and plenty of tackle, if it was necessary to hoist the beastly thing. If you can find somewhere on the forecastle where the davit might be lashed down, without obstructing other gear or the men's access to wherever they had to go, then that would be a likely spot. Another possibility would be the fore chains, between the ship's side and the deadeyes of the foremast shrouds. Or perhaps on the boat skids across the waist, if your ship had those. Making things serve two (or more) purposes has value in a small, crowded ship. I'm not sure what second purpose a davit might serve, other than as a place for men to sit when having yarn during a dog-watch, but maybe someone can be more imaginative. Trevor

Thanks for that, Palmerit! I'll likely put steel to basswood planks this evening and I'll need that bit of reassurance. Trevor