Runner

Ah, no, I was asking how your project is progressing. Mine are stalled currently and I have yet to do anything to the yawl Wasp other than remove the over-long boom. I'm still figuring out how to rig it. Most is straight forward but I can see no evidence for mizzen mast rigging and cannot figure out the original helm control device. The portion on the rudder post seems to be original and complete but the forward part has been replaced and beneath the current confection there are concentric circular marks with a central screw hole. I'm thinking maybe a fitting with concentric cylinders over which an elastic band linked to the tiller could be placed, with each cylinder used changing the tension on the elastic band and therefore on the tiller. But I have yet to find contemporary evidence for any remotely similar device. I've attached photos of the tiller and the circular marks, and the only period photo of a similar model yawl I have found. This model is not Wasp. It has too much sheer and a hatch. Unfortunately, its mode of steering is not visible. Wasp intrigues me. She was clearly a major project for her builder and yet she has no hatch. She is lightly built for pond sailing and not more heavily built for open water skiff sailing, and does not have the peg board for that. Her yawl rig and wooden fin with integral ballast suggest British influence since the yawl rig never quite caught on stateside and American model yachtsmen preferred metal fins and bulb keels in the 1890s. She was reportedly owned and likely built by a Port Washington resident named James Smith. The likliest candidate I have found in the census returns available lived in a neighboring town in 1891 and was born in the UK. He would have been in his 20s in the 1890s.

I did buy it on eBay after going to see it. Interesting history to the model and interesting rig. It was listed as dating from the 1920s and presented as a cutter with a very long boom, but it was originally a yawl (with the mizzen mast located in the step used later for the crutch supporting that boom. It was acquired in the 1980s by the vendor's father in Port Washington on the north shore of Long Island. The father was a long-time member of the Port Washington model yacht club (formed 1898) and served as president. He did a cosmetic restoration and it was shown in the club's centenary exhibit.

Hi, how is this project progressing? I have two large sailing model projects--a reproduction of a 10-gun cutter built by four British veterans of the War of 1812 in the early 1830s and the possible restoration of a yawl-rigged pond yacht from the mid-1890s (I think). The cutter's helm was rigged with a lead bullet that slid across the deck to pull the helm over when the model heeled and the yawl had some bizarre pre-Braine gear steam-punk-like helm control device that only partially survives. The cutter is five feet long overall and as high. The yawl's hull is five feet long. Both of these projects are currently stalled. I find that the pond yacht people are focused on standard classes of yacht that can be raced and are fitted with Braine or vane gear, and that in general they know little about early sailing models.

I don't want to hijack Michael's wonderful thread but here are a couple of photos of my project, the first being the historic model in its current (incorrectly-rigged) form.

I am truly in awe of your project Michael, and your craftsmanship. I too am building a large sailing model of a cutter, but a very different project and quality. Mine is a 60" LOA copy of a sailing model of a 10-gun naval cutter built by four British veterans of the War of 1812 in the early 1830s. The original model resides in a small museum about 400 yards from where it was completed, and has never left the town. It has been altered by two well-intentioned but poorly-informed restorations and my project started as an attempt to reconstruct its original form and functionality. The model is greatly simplified, but almost everything on it once worked--including the pump and the guns! I still haven't managed to figure out how to make the elm tree pump valves. The project is as much a great dive into local and naval history as it is a modelmaking challenge. My project started with initial research in 1997; I now have my sails and hope to start rigging as soon as time and workspace permit.

Thank you both for your responses. I will definitely be trying shellac Bob! Your description of the technique is awesome.

Other than soaking them in glue, is there a way to make reef points behave? The reef points on my 1:24 scale sails go in any direction but down! I think they are going to drive me mad!

You can taper masts easily with a rasp and sandpaper whether working from square or round stock. This is how it was done in the C19th. Use the rasp to taper the stock square, then octagonal, and then use two or three grades of glasspaper starting with the coarsest and ending with the finest, rotating the spar back and forth with one hand while curling a small rectangle of glasspaper around it and moving it to and fro along the spar as you go. You can get surprisingly good results this way.