tkay11

Thank you very much for your advice, Ab. I took the run of the deck from what I take to be the beams supporting the deck, above which runs a dotted line. I see the outline of the wale as quite separate from the dotted lines running on top of the beams. I outlined the beams as brown squares in the drawing, but I quite see that this could represent the central spine and that I had not taken into account the camber. I agree with your analysis: the point is just to get on with it and not be too picky about a couple of millimetres (equivalent to 14cm at full scale), when the plans are themselves photos or scans of original work, and were possibly drawn up just to give the idea of the ship. I also agree that the safest thing is to work from the half-breadth plan to make the bulwarks for the model as correlation with the sheer plan might be too difficult. Thanks again for the help! Tony

Ab, I have followed your log with great interest, and while I am recuperating from surgery have been drawing up the plans just to make the hull of this fish-hooker in card before I can get back to my chaloupe model. I have started this by tracing the lines in CAD. Unfortunately, perhaps because of my failure to understand the plans, I cannot seem to reconcile what I take to be the line of the deck on the sheer plan with that on the half breadth plan. You will see in the following tracing the lines for the fore bulkheads K and M together with the general outline for all the fore bulkheads. On the right there is the sheer plan on which I have drawn the station lines for the bulkheads. I the uppermost three lower lines on the half-breadth plan do seem to signify roughly the tops of the bulkheads and the lines of the deck, but the lowest two horizontal lines from what I take to be the line of the deck on the half-breadth plan do not seem to match the line of the deck on the sheer plan for station lines K and M (they are out by about 2mm each at a scale of roughly 1:70). I am pretty convinced that either I have not understood the plans correctly or that the original lines were not drawn with the level of accuracy necessary to a CAD drawing, so I would be very grateful if you could let me know whether I am being far too picky or just plain wrong in my interpretation of the plans. On the drawing I have erased all the mast drawings for the sake of clarity. Thanks, Tony

Have you given up on this model? Tony

Interesting comment about the rudder coat. The few contemporary models of cutters I have seen had a different design, with a box-like construction over the rudder, so I wondered whether or not there was extra coating within the boxing for those cutters. Do you have any sources on this, or is it an informed guess based on your usual historical thoroughness? Some of the builders of the Sherbourne (myself included) put rudder coats on. Do you think this is a mistake? It's also a lovely tiller you've made. Do you have any comment about the strapping or roping that is sometimes seen on the handles of tillers, purportedly to give more grip? Tony

Great build, but I see you didn't paint the waterline. Tony

Just in case you haven't seen it, in addition to Bindy's build and Maurino's gallery on this forum, there's a build of the Leudo on YouTube which you might find helpful at: Tony

Doris uses the term 'foil' and her suppliers are at https://www.tapety-folie.cz/drevo/c-2404/. These look like pva or some kind of glue-backed pliant plastic. She stretches and shapes it with heat. Tony

We had a discussion about this in August 2016 in relation to stowing the anchor on the Sherbourne. In the end I followed the diagrams from Harland's Seamanship in the Age of Sail. The general discussion was at I showed this on the model at I hope this helps. Tony

Great idea. Wish I'd thought of it! Tony

The system isn't really set up for the foreign visitor to England unless you're able to stick to a timetable. The NMM collections are now housed in a variety of locations in England, the largest of which I believe is in Chatham. You can obtain a full list of all the models you would like to see, together with their locations, by writing either to the Science Museum or the NMM. I started my own search by writing to the Science Museum in May 2014 asking where their collection was now housed and saying I was interested in cutters of the 18th and 19th Centuries. They wrote back promptly together with a spreadsheet listing all cutter models with all their locations throughout the country. As a result I was able to check the ones that were nearest to my home in London. They provided me with a time slot of 2 hours to see the three models I had chosen which had been brought into a viewing room. I attach the spreadsheet that they provided so you can get an idea of how it's organised. Unfortunately the list does not tell you the condition of the model or its level of detail, so I was stuck in my first go with one model so crude and so battered it had limited (albeit some) value for my purposes. So I had to refine my search by looking at pictures of models from the earlier Science Museum exhibits as well as some from the NMM website, and asking the Science Museum about those specific models. Again they were rapid and helpful in their reply and I was quickly led to a curator at Chatham who arranged another 2 hour slot to view in a viewing area 5 models from their collection. The curator accompanied me and gave me more details about the specific models. When the 2 hours was up, he guided me round the rest of the huge collection, although of course this time the models were kept behind their glass cases. One slight advantage to booking a viewing at Chatham is that you thus gain free entry to the whole dockyard other than the special features such as the ropewalk demonstration. So, all in all, if you think you're able to allocate a particular time for your visit, then it's workable. It just takes a bit of planning and setting up. Tony Cutters1.xls

I have a pair of these very handy vices which are the ones I turn to mostly. They do have a couple of downsides, such as strength of grip which seems to decrease with age, but in such instances I turn to the other types. These are readily available from parents, although it's good to be cautious when looking for a source online. Tony

I'm pretty much an amateur at this, but in case it helps I thought that Peterssen had added a simple loading tackle to the backstays based on the model he saw in the Science Museum even though it was not often seen in other contemporary models. You can see this in my Sherbourne log near the very bottom of the posting at In relation to the fiddle blocks on the yard, I am not clear about your puzzle, but if it relates to the yard ties I had some discussion about this at I think that Peterssen sometimes just gave a quick outline (as he did for the Burton pendants on a cutter) rather than filling in all the lines just so that you can see the main functionality of a section of rigging. You can also see the full discussion of the Burton pendant problem at I personally found Peterssen's book very good from the point of view of explaining rigging. For the details you really need to go to Marquardt and Steel as well as others already mentioned. I hope that helps Tony

Once in Barbados I thought I'd go to buy a present of rum for a relative. I went to a local small supermarket and looked at the vast array of different types of rum. Not knowing anything about rum, I decided to ask the rather bored-looking young woman at the till for a recommendation. 'Suit yourself', she said, 'They all make you drunk'. Something similar may go for the various types of clamp. Perhaps they all hold your ship. Tony

You are not really clear as to what you do not understand about 'the theory of scales', so I apologise if you already understand that 1:65 means that on a model 1inch would represent 65inches on the real ship. If you hadn't understood this, to estimate the lengths that you need to use, all you have to do is divide the length you expect on the full size ship by 65, as the scale stated for the Artesiana Latina model is 1:65. So a 20ft length would work out at 20x12=240inches, which divided by 65 would give you 3.69 inches, or 93.8mm. I don't know anything about plank lengths on ships of that period in Spain but there are plenty of build logs on this site for your particular kit which may help, as well as for other kits of the same ship. As far as I understand, hull planking tended to be in the 20-24ft range, although that may be different on Spanish ships of the period. I don't think the length of the ship would have much to do with the length of planks used. This would be more dependent on the lengths of cut available which would be set against the need to have as much stability and waterproofing as possible. The widths of the planking would, of course differ depending on their position on the hull, between 1.5 times the width at the centre (which I think might have been 10-12inches), and 0.5 times that width. For the deck planking, zu Mondfeld in his book 'Historic Ship Models' says that before the 16th Century the width of deck planks was 12-18 inches, the thickness of the top planking 3 inches, the gap for caulking about 3/8th of an inch (and here I think he's referring to English inches). The treenail pattern would vary according to the width of the deck planks. I believe the length of deck planking would vary between 12ft and 20ft, but could well be wrong. More than the particular lengths of plank used it will be important to ensure that you have the pattern of butt shifts correct on both deck and hull. I can see that you've built a few models before, so you may well have read the excellent planking tutorials in the download section of this site, but I do recommend them in case you haven't. I hope this helps, but I would emphasise I'm certainly no expert. Tony

I've just had a look at Scott's (bigpav) build of the Renown on this site from 2013. Like others he claimed the wood was terrible quality. I also note that it has a slightly unusual construction in that the hull is built in 2 halves on bulkheads and that he found difficulty when assembling the planked two halves. It may be done this way because of the way the propeller shaft is fitted I downloaded the plans and instructions from the Billings site and suspect that the biggest problem might be in building the hull and that the remaining fittings would be relatively easy, especially given the lack of masting and rigging. Given that the plans are provided there is always the possibility that if you make mistakes you can build your own hull using the drawings. Given his difficulty with the halves, you might find it easier to fit all the bulkheads of both sides and glue them together before planking. It might give you more leeway to ensure the symmetry of the hull. You'll find a reasonable build log by Charles on Model Ship Builder, where he did plank after the two halves were fitted. As others have said, this is an interesting ship as there are so few builds on this site, and there'll be plenty of people to help you when you ask questions. I won't say good luck with the build as it's not really a matter of luck -- more with patience and perseverance as you meet difficulties and try to overcome them. So I'll say I hope the difficulties prove to be few and the rewards many. The painting should prove great fun. Tony