tkay11

Lovely work, Phil. Tony

wefalck: Out of interest I thought I'd find out where to buy acrylic foam in the UK. I can't find any sites, including Plexiglas, that talk of acrylic foam except in relation to acrylic foam tape. I found a reference to syntactic foam as another name for acrylic foam in a paper on flexible acrylic foams as a carrier for speciality tapes. That led me to look up syntactic foam on Wikipedia, where it says: "Syntactic foams are composite materials synthesized by filling a metal, polymer, or ceramic matrix with hollow spheres called microballoons or cenospheres or non-hollow spheres (e.g. perlite). In this context, "syntactic" means "put together." The presence of hollow particles results in lower density, higher specific strength (strength divided by density), lower coefficient of thermal expansion, and, in some cases, radar or sonar transparency. A manufacturing method for low density syntactic foams is based on the principle of buoyancy. The term was originally coined by the Bakelite Company, in 1955, for their lightweight composites made of hollow phenolic microspheres bonded to a matrix of phenolic, epoxy, or polyester." So I looked up syntactic foam suppliers, and their offerings include rigid, high strength composites of epoxy resin and hollow glass microspheres. Would this be the material you refer to? It's probably very expensive. Would it be very different in properties to the generally available PVC foam or foam board, which sounds similar to polyurethane foam and is very crumbly in character? Tony

Hellmuht: I'm sending you a Personal Message with Dane's email so that you can negotiate directly. Tony

Thanks for posting your model of the Chaloupe, Hellmuht. It's a pity you don't have a build log for it. But I've been admiring your build of the Bounty, and your post led me to your log of the build of the Spanish Longboat. While I'm recovering from surgery (which has prevented me from working on the Chaloupe for the moment), I've been looking at a card kit from Russia for an 18th Century French longboat at a scale of 1:48. I'm still working through translating it, but it has a very interesting construction method -- similar to Chuck's longboat and to your Spanish one -- and it's entirely card. Dane, who developed the kit, posted his completed build on this forum in 2013 at It has particular interest in that it also gives plans for all the extras (buckets, barrels, anchors, hooks) and very full rigging plans. It was also very cheap (about €25 including tracked postage). The instructions are incredibly detailed (far more than most card kits), and as a result it is well worth the effort in translating them. You can see the creation of the kit from its inception and its subsequent build in Dane's log at http://only-paper.ru/forum/85-12867-1 The cover of the kit (which you have to order from Dane directly) is: Tony

I agree it's a beautiful model, G.L., but it's by Hellmuht, who's just showing me the possibilities and offering help should I need it. Tony

I used balsa as filler for all the bulkheads in my first build (Sherbourne). I found it wasn't very good with glue for the planking, but maybe that was my fault. It doesn't hold nails or other fastenings either in case you are thinking of going down that route. It certainly was better than nothing, though, and extremely easy to shape. I'd go with pine or basswood/lime in future as suggested by Jaager. Tony

Gosh! Three complementary and very useful replies all at once! Thanks very much vossiewulf, Bob and Michael. Very interesting indeed. Tony

Thanks, Alex. I'll get back to you on this as I'm still debating my next build. Tony

Thanks for the info, Alex. I didn't see a price for the drawings/plans for the Imperial Yacht Queen Victoria. Have I missed something? Tony

Thanks very much, Chuck and Wefalck. I think that gives me all the answers I need to satisfy curiosity! Tony

Thanks, Welfalck. I suspected it was through software. I realise that 3D CAD can show the spiled planks in their fully fitted form. Can it work out the shapes when flat, before bending to the curvature of the hull. I can't see how to do that with my 3D TurboCAD (though admittedly I am only really conversant with it in its 2D form). Tony

Just out of curiosity, I was wondering how kit makers are able to provide pre-spiled planking. I have just received one such Russian kit for a longboat in card, and have seen others (such as Chuck's longboat) with laser-cut pre-spiled planks. Is this done with some computer software, or is it that when making a pre-production model the spiled planks are carefully traced, or that paper is laid on the frames or shell to achieve the same outlines? Tony

Milling is fun, isn't it! Nice result. Tony

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

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

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