Richvee

Tools of the trade:
 
First, I have to say that being back to the office for two weeks and the wasted time of a long commute has really thrown a wet blanket on my build progress. Nonetheless, I do have more of the progress I made while happily working from my home bench for nearly three months. 
I really enjoyed making the various bladed tools for this kit once I figured out I could do a better job with wood than the photo-etch parts included in the kit. I don’t own a soldering iron (yet) so other than getting one and taking a crash-course on how to use it, I didn’t have much of a choice. It was also another chance to try my hand at miniature carving.  
 

 
I'm not sure what species of wood this stuff is, but I really like the way it carves. I think I may have salvaged it from old mini-blinds. You never know when something that nearly went to the trash will be perfect for something down the road.
 

 

 
I went with what I considered the most iconic harpoon shape. 

 

 
I used wood for the metal shafts as well. 
 

 

 
The lance and harpoon almost ready for paint. All that's left to do is refine the transition from shaft to blade. 
 

 
And finally, a reasonably believable finished product.
 
 
 
The curved piece on the boat hook is the only metal I used on these items. I still need to "sharpen" the harpoon blade with a little dry-brushed steel. 
 

 
All of these items tend to lose their realism when singled out and studied carefully but as details of the whole I think they do their job.
 

 

 
I also made a grapnel from the same wood as the other items. I made a "metal" bucket from paper to add something visually different than the coopered bucket in the plans. 
 
 
 

Thank you both for the comments!
 
Thank you everyone for the likes!
 
So far, I have not needed to use magnifiers.  I do however have multiple halogen bulbs sitting right over my work area.  My work area has lighting like an operating theater.
 
I am back to working on my fire buckets.  I have rough carved 3, so far.
 
I took a pause to paint some 28mm miniatures that I bought last winter. 
 
I also fixed up a broken whaling ship, I think an old Model Shipways Kate Cory, that I found at a local flea market yesterday.  That was fun.  I just had to remake a few pieces (mostly located in the head), fix the masts and replace/install some rigging. 
 
During this process, I found a quick and easy way to make the cheeks on the head (the pieces on the sides of the breakwater that provide lateral support for the beakhead and typically support the head timbers), which were missing entirely.  For those who are not experienced with model ship building, the head is one of the more difficult sections to make.  Making the cheeks usually involves a lot of trial and error. 
 
I call this out and provide my discovery because even for those building kits, most of the kits I have had did not provide the head pieces pre-cut.  Those kits advised making the cheeks from card first and utilizing trial and error to fit them to the ship.
 
The quick way is to use a contour gauge.  That completely eliminates the trial and error.  It was the quickest and easiest head that I have ever made (admittedly there were no head timbers or head rails).  I think all four pieces took me a couple of hours to measure, draw, make and paint.  If you have read through this log, it took me many hours, over several weeks, to build the head on the Victory (which while much more complicated, I also used the trial and error method, which involved multiple re-do's).
 
 
 

Forgive the off-topic post but the next build has arrived and the pressure to complete the current one is intense. I'm already kicking around ideas in my head on how to make piles of 1/32 scale herring 😂
I can't imagine what it's like for you guys/gals that have 10 kits beckoning from the stash!
 

 
 

Hi Rich...thanks again for the nice comments and encouragement! I can't imagine trying to make the contents of one of these boats at 1/64 scale. I can barely see this stuff at 1/16!

Great stuff! Love the realism of your work.  I'll be using these photos when I get around to the whaleboat hardware on my Kate Cory. Even for my 1/64 ship, I agree the line tubs are a must in each of my boats. Other than oars, mast, and a harpoon or two, I'm not sure how many more details I can stuff into my little boats. 

Tubs, kegs, bucket and drogue:
 
For me, the line tubs and the rope carefully coiled within are amongst the most interesting focal points of the model. While the boat itself was lucky to survive a full voyage, I’m assuming some of these tubs put in long careers (assuming they float!). I tried to depict mine with multiple coats of whitewash over both the staves and iron hoops. Like everything else on the boat, I’m guessing they got dirty and wet. Continuing that theme, I treated the fresh water and lantern kegs similarly. I went with the square/simple drogue simply because there was such an abundance of round/coopered items on the boat already. I opted for a copper bucket because the thought  of making another set of individual staves, particularly that small, made my head hurt!
 

 

 
I opted to do these items from scratch using individual staves rather than the suggested method in the instructions. I'm not sure if all the extra work made much of a difference but there you have it. As I said, the square drogue was an entirely aesthetic choice and I happen to have a nice supply of lovely Syren rope to show off on it. 
 
 

Whaling gear, boat equipment and aesthetic choices:
 
It’s really quite remarkable that 5 men could be squeezed into one of these boats given the sheer amount of stuff that was brought along for a hunt. Once I got a sense of how packed with gear the boat would be if I included everything accounted for in the plans, I decided to do a little editing. I have no doubt that all the aforementioned stuff was present when these boats were sent into action but my goal was to strike a reasonable compromise between stuffing the thing so full of things (as historically accurate as they might be) that the boat itself was lost in the chaos or focusing on the items that offered the most visual impact. For instance, the book suggests that five harpoons were brought along on a hunt. I have no doubt that’s true but felt depicting one at the ready tells the visual story sufficiently without finding space for 4 more.  There are great examples out there of boats with all the gear laid out around them in a diorama-like setting but for space/display purposes, I need to keep everything I plan to show in/on the boat.
 

 
As you can see, the boat starts getting chaotic pretty quickly, even partially filled. 
 

 
Fooling around with visually interesting ways to stage select items. Pretend you didn't see any of the items yet, they come later! 
 
Oars:
 
I made a couple of the oars with the dowel included in the kit but just wasn’t satisfied with the “feel” of the material or the fact that most of them were noticeably warped (probably my fault for storing them on the basement workbench). The die-cut material provided for the blades wasn’t going to work for me either. Once again, I turned to my scrap heap and found what I thought were better options for both the blades and shafts. If studied carefully you can see that the transition from shaft to blade isn’t always consistent but the overall feel seemed reasonably believable. Given the amount of wear and tear the real things must have taken from filthy hands, constant rubbing on oar locks and endless cycles of soaking and drying in salt water I weathered these accordingly. While I have no proof whatsoever that it was actually done on the real things, I painted the oar blades gray to better contrast the identification stripes. A completely aesthetic choice that I think adds some visual interest.
 

 

 
The second time's the charm. I recycled my first attempts but take my word for it, they were awful. 
 

Nice work. I agree learning the history of the whaling industry is half the fun. You work looks far beyond beginner level. 

Hi Mike...thanks for checking in! I'm familiar with your excellent build...the craftsmanship is superb. One of the most cleanly/accurately executed versions of this boat I've seen. I'm glad to hear you'll be completing it and can't wait to follow it to the finish! Thanks for the heads-up on the cooperage. I started work on those items recently and agree they need to be handled more delicately than the materials supplied in the kit allow. I've been painting with both traditional brushes and the airbrush in layers. I do base coats with the airbrush and weather with a traditional brush over the top. I'm still playing with techniques...this build is the great experiment.
 
Hi Rich...thanks for checking in and the kind words. I actually decided to do this particular boat because I was spending a lot of time on the New Bedford Whaling Museum web site researching family history in their excellent database of whale voyages and ship crews. It turns out I have ancestors on both sides of the family who were active in the early whaling industry. One did several cruises on the Morgan. Interesting stuff!

Nice work. I agree learning the history of the whaling industry is half the fun. You work looks far beyond beginner level. 

Painting the hull:
 
I started with a base coat of flat white which actually did a pretty good job of hiding my many mistakes/imperfections and for the first time really showed the beautiful lines of these boats. Even I couldn't screw that up!
 

 
Given that I had already done a certain amount of weathering on the boat's interior, leaving this clean outward appearance wasn't going to work. I had always planned to depict a boat that had been well-used, so it was time to add some grime.
 

 

 
The Ronnberg book indicated that the nails on the exterior of the hull were puttied over and painted, thus making them invisible. This may well have been the case fresh out of the shop but having looked at countless vintage photos (see below) of real boats on the New Bedford Whaling Museum web site, the nails are often quite visible. There's nothing subtle about it so I opted to add them. 
 

 

Thwart risers, some interior painting and ceiling planks:
 
I made one easily avoidable mistake here that careful reading of the plans and instruction book could have prevented. The thwart risers are intended to be slightly thicker than the ceiling planks that start under them but I failed to take note of this and used the same thickness of material. I’ve noticed this in several other builds so I can see that it’s an easy detail to miss. If I had realized this before installing the thwarts themselves I would have added a thin strip to fake the extra thickness. Oh well, another lesson learned. The ceiling planks went on mostly without a hitch other than having to improvise some hidden support here and there where a plank ended and the frame it was supposed to terminate on happened to be somewhere else. The great frame disaster strikes again! I added the first coat of paint before installing the ceiling planks but added some weathering later when I had a better feel for the overall color scheme. 
 

 
I decided to go with a dark blue/grey for the interior of the hull, thwarts and risers. These areas will be weathered to a lighter, sun-faded color eventually but my overall color scheme will be dark blue, black, various shades of grays, and white. Nobody seems to be able to pinpoint any particular combination of colors beyond the primer coats new boats were delivered with so I did my own thing. Given the jobs these boats were designed to do and the relatively short lives they were expected to do it in, I concluded that utility was probably much higher on the list than adventures on the color wheel. Distinguishing your boat from that of another ship seems to be a reasonable criteria when considering  how colors were chosen. 
 

 
I installed the first ceiling plank with the light gray paint I intended to use on those to get some sense of how the scheme would work. I knew everything would be toned down considerably with a little weathering so I settled on my choices. 
 

 
Before the ceiling planks could be installed in the bottom of the boat the centerboard case and mast step needed to be added. Painting these the dark blue rather than gray was probably something that would have been considered a waste of time in a real boat but I liked the contrast and the fact that they were installed before the ceiling on the real thing made it somewhat plausible. I didn't use fasteners on this build so I made a test of simulating nails with paint early on. I didn't think these looked overly convincing so I ended up scraping them away with a sharp blade and using a simple number 2 pencil instead. With a little weathering I thought the results were much better. 
 

 

 
With the ceiling complete and some subtle weathering applied (in my opinion) I was satisfied to move on to test-fitting the thwarts.
 

 
With the interior mostly complete and painted, all 5 thwarts were fitted in position as per the plans. According to Ronnberg's book, the bow and stern sheets weren't painted so I resisted making them light gray. As you can see, the forward-most thwart ended up with a misplaced frame right in the middle. It should have rested between two frames. I could have moved the thwart forward and maybe gotten away with it but I decided to stick to plans from this point forward no matter what. The great frame disaster strikes again! 
 

 
 
 
 
Fast-forward and a whole bunch of other interior details get done! All of this work took several months to complete. Carving the cheek pieces, bow chocks, loggerhead, oar locks, peak cleats and various other parts was time-consuming and educational. I thought carving was going to be my achilles heel but turned out to be something I rather enjoyed. If a particular step/activity seems intimidating, just give it a shot. You may discover you had nothing to be afraid of. 

I started this boat last Fall before I was a member here so I’m actually somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% finished. It's my first nautical build so what might appear to be lightning fast construction is really just a lot of catching up on already completed steps. When I get to the stuff I’m doing now you’ll notice a rather dramatic slow-down!  My photos of the early stages of the build are hit and miss and the quality leaves a lot to be desired. It's casual documentation at best. Fortunately, lots of good logs for this boat are already available on this forum so all the nitty-gritty of actual construction techniques have been covered quite thoroughly by far more accomplished builders than I. While this build log certainly isn’t necessary in terms of critical new information, I thought it would be a good opportunity to get familiar with actively using the forum and share some of the things I did differently on my build. My next build log (1:32 Amati Fifie) will be a much more professional endeavor with photos from my “real” camera rather than a phone…I promise! 
 
 
Thoughts on the kit:
 
If you plan to build this kit entirely from what’s in the box, you should be able to get reasonably good results. My kit was missing a few items but nothing I couldn’t make myself so I didn’t pursue replacements. Other than the planks and building jig, I didn’t use much of the die-cut material provided in the kit. Given that I was looking for a little more “texture” out of my weathered boat than the smooth basswood the kit provided, I turned to my bottomless supply of scraps from various projects I’ve done over the years. I wasn’t overly excited about the look of the rope that came with the kit given what an important part of the overall visual impact it has on a boat of this scale (or any scale really) so I opted for the excellent stuff available from Syren Ship Models instead. It’s a dramatic improvement for such a small investment. This kit comes with 6 sheets of what I consider clear/excellent plans and Ronnberg’s book “To Build a Whaleboat” which is half instruction manual and half a history of the whaleboat in general. For me, these items alone are worth the cost of the kit. 
 

 
I was a little surprised that Model Shipways used such a crudely built version of the boat on the box cover. It doesn't come close to accurately representing the quality of the kit and really would have made me think twice about my purchase if I had seen it in person. Your results will most definitely be far better than what you see on the box!
 

 
6 sheets of wonderfully detailed plans. 
 

 
Ronnberg's excellent instruction book.
 
The building jig:
 
If I had any advice to offer on this build as a boat/ship modeling novice, it would be to take your time on this particular step. It’s tempting to hurry through setting up your building jig and getting on to the fun part but everything that follows depends on accuracy here. My kit had quite a few small and not-so-small discrepancies between the plans and the laser cut parts so be sure to compare the two and proceed accordingly. Trust the plans rather than the die-cuts. If I had assembled the building jig “as-is” it clearly would have caused issues during planking. This is probably a no-brainer for people with a few builds under their belt but I was a little perplexed as to why the die-cuts wouldn’t be dead-on. I know better now. I would also recommend strengthening the building jig if the slotted joints feel sloppy/loose like they did with my kit. I added small blocks to strengthen and align the joints overall and I think it was worth the minimal effort invested. I may have just gotten a little unlucky with my particular kit but I suspect this is a common issue. The final thing worth noting as it pertains to the jig is investing in a good quality piece of flat material for your building board that’s not likely to deform with changes in humidity. Dead flat and staying that way is a must if you want the bow and stern horses to sit properly and receive the frames without modifications. 
 

 
The frame after it had been removed from the horses. Note the use of small blocks to square up and stabilize things. The planking process puts a lot of stress on this thing so sturdy is good. 
 

Single tyes would be more appropriate for your upper yards.  I would think that a notch in the center of the timber batten truss would allow room for the tye sling.  You could either notch the side nearest the yard so that the sling would appear to pass through the batten or notch the side nearest the mast.  Passing the sling closest to the yard would negate the possibility of friction against the mast when hoisting the yard.
 
Hope that makes sense.
 
Regards,

Thanks for the likes guys. A little update on the progress of the fore course. After drilling the sheet sheaves, painting, and adding the iron straps, and multiple eyes, it was time to work on how this truss was going to hold on. Small plastic discs with pilot holes proved to be  a futile endeavor. I decided to try  making 4 eyes with 24 gauge steel wire, and the truss could slip in between them, and get secured with a brass pin through it and clipped flush. 

I made another half a dozen before finding 4 I liked and the brass pin slipped through easily. Next was to drill pilot holes for these eyes. I put the yard in a vice, and taped 1/32" square strip of wood on the yard to keep an even spacing between the eyes. 

 
This ended up working OK, and it was time to test fit the yard. To my amazement, it seems this will work!
 


I added an eye at the end of the sling chain which I cut to it's proper length, and drilled a corresponding hole on the top side of the yard on the center band that will hold the sling chain. 
 
I took the yard off, and added the blocks for the reef tackle, lifts, braces and clew lines.  Then it was time to attempt that sheet block for the chain topsail sheet. I cut the rough shape out of a piece of styrene plastic, and then another to make the front and back plates. Then I took 2 - 2.5mm metal bullseyes I had laying around, filed them real thin, and glued them to the plastic to resemble the pulleys in the block. I let that dry, and then filed the plastic to it's final shape, as best as I could. Then I added two very thin strips of wood to the front plate to get the look like the one on the Lagoda. It's very small. It measures 10mm across, 7 mm deep, and about 2mm thick.  I drilled a small hole top center of the block, and added an eye on the bottom side of the yard. A pin will be inserted through the front plate, through the eye in the yard, and through the back plate to hold the block in place. I tested it's fit on the yard to make sure I had the eye on the yard the popper distance away from the yard so the block holes for the pin and the eye on the yard lined up.
 
It's looks a little rough, as the camera picks up every little detail, but I'm happy with the result. 

 
Once again the "real block"
 

 
I blackened the sheet chain, and wove it through the block. And here it is pinned to a piece of Styrofoam, waiting to get installed on the yard. It will go on last, after the lines I need to put on like reef lines, footropes, stirrups and flemish horses. 

 
Added the jackstay, bunt line and leach  line blocks, and stirrups. Coated the stirrups in diluted white glue, and they're hanging straight to dry. 

 

 
I again tried to replicate some detail I saw on the Logada. The stirrups were lashed to the jackstays with manila rope.  

 
..And my attempt. Not exact, but I think a decent facsimile of it...🙂

 
A few more details and it will be time to get this yard on the ship. 
 

While the Soleil Royal was a war ship of 1670 and the KC is a whaler in 1856, the principals should be similar.   Lees shows the tye(s) to be secured either with a single at the center or double depending on the era and spar.  The double tye would allow you to secure them outside the truss/batten as you suggest.  It is possible that these relatively small yards may not have had battens at all, but rather slings and single tye/halyard.   
 
Allan

Beautiful work. So, I see what you’re saying, however, I have a single tye, and, as you can see in the plans above call for timber battens, not rope slings/truss. So how would I get that strap around the center of my yard if it calls for timber battens? Maybe 2 straps around the yard similar to yours, on either side of the batten, then lashed together and the tye secured in the center of the two straps?  

Thanks Allen. The Kate Cory had wooden battens as shown in the plans below. Note the topsail yard has a halyard band and and eye for attaching the halyard tye. The topgallant and royal do not have that band and eye. How was the halyard tye attached to these two yards? 

 
 

You are talking about two different things. 
One is the halyard. The other is the truss/sling.
 
Allans photo above is for the truss/sling which will hold the yard in close to the mast.
The halyard hoists the yard.  Your instructions call for the halyard tye to be seized in a bight at the center of the yard.  If you look at my build log for the soleil royale and scroll back a few pages (post #154 last few photos )  you will see a photo of how this should look.  In that photo the only part that is missing is the seizing of the two parts together just above where the hitch crosses the standing part of the tye.  On mine there are two tyes because it is a lower yard.
 
Regards,

A link helps..
 
 

Rich,
These "battens" look just pretty much like LT Green's patented truss used on some ships starting about 1830.   Lees describes these but only with the  ring and eye.  It was as you describe and they were for topsail spars, not the topgallants.   I really have no idea on how this would be rigged unless the kit is wrong and no truss (batten) actually was used, but rather slings and/or rope trusses.   Hopefully members here with more knowledge on whalers of the day can help.   
Allan

My plans and instructions for the Kate Cory say the topgallant and royal yard halyards do not have a halyard band and an eye for securing the halyard. The directions simply say..
"The tye is hitched to the yards centerline and not to a metal band like the topsail yard".
While the rigging specs booklet states
"Tarred manila, 2 1/2"c. Sling end seized around yard in a bight. "
 
There are no pictures of this in the plans or instructions. My question is, how was this slung around the yard with a timber batten mounted to the yard to fit it to the mast? My only guess is there a space between the batten and the yard to slip the halyard though to get around the yard? Yet I see no evidence of such a space on the kit's plans, nor in the detailed plans from New Bedford.  Can anyone explain to me what kind of knot/sling was used on these yards? 
 
Thanks
 
 

Thanks for the likes guys. A little update on the progress of the fore course. After drilling the sheet sheaves, painting, and adding the iron straps, and multiple eyes, it was time to work on how this truss was going to hold on. Small plastic discs with pilot holes proved to be  a futile endeavor. I decided to try  making 4 eyes with 24 gauge steel wire, and the truss could slip in between them, and get secured with a brass pin through it and clipped flush. 

I made another half a dozen before finding 4 I liked and the brass pin slipped through easily. Next was to drill pilot holes for these eyes. I put the yard in a vice, and taped 1/32" square strip of wood on the yard to keep an even spacing between the eyes. 

 
This ended up working OK, and it was time to test fit the yard. To my amazement, it seems this will work!
 


I added an eye at the end of the sling chain which I cut to it's proper length, and drilled a corresponding hole on the top side of the yard on the center band that will hold the sling chain. 
 
I took the yard off, and added the blocks for the reef tackle, lifts, braces and clew lines.  Then it was time to attempt that sheet block for the chain topsail sheet. I cut the rough shape out of a piece of styrene plastic, and then another to make the front and back plates. Then I took 2 - 2.5mm metal bullseyes I had laying around, filed them real thin, and glued them to the plastic to resemble the pulleys in the block. I let that dry, and then filed the plastic to it's final shape, as best as I could. Then I added two very thin strips of wood to the front plate to get the look like the one on the Lagoda. It's very small. It measures 10mm across, 7 mm deep, and about 2mm thick.  I drilled a small hole top center of the block, and added an eye on the bottom side of the yard. A pin will be inserted through the front plate, through the eye in the yard, and through the back plate to hold the block in place. I tested it's fit on the yard to make sure I had the eye on the yard the popper distance away from the yard so the block holes for the pin and the eye on the yard lined up.
 
It's looks a little rough, as the camera picks up every little detail, but I'm happy with the result. 

 
Once again the "real block"
 

 
I blackened the sheet chain, and wove it through the block. And here it is pinned to a piece of Styrofoam, waiting to get installed on the yard. It will go on last, after the lines I need to put on like reef lines, footropes, stirrups and flemish horses. 

 
Added the jackstay, bunt line and leach  line blocks, and stirrups. Coated the stirrups in diluted white glue, and they're hanging straight to dry. 

 

 
I again tried to replicate some detail I saw on the Logada. The stirrups were lashed to the jackstays with manila rope.  

 
..And my attempt. Not exact, but I think a decent facsimile of it...🙂

 
A few more details and it will be time to get this yard on the ship. 
 

A little thinking out loud as I get ready to start the yards. These are "new" for me. I made the Model Shipways Taurus and Benjamin W Latham eons ago when Model Shipways was in Bogota, NJ near where I grew up. So I'm trying to lay out a plan in my head for the yards.
 
 Rig as much as possible off the ship first. I want to add the reef tackles. Again, I want to get as much on here as I can. A block with a stopper knot at the ends of the yard run to the mast and down will suffice.
 
The sheet for the lower yard is chain. I want to have this trough the sheave, with the clew line block attached to the upper end, and the bottom rove through the sheet blocks under the yard at the mast and single block with the standing end of the topsail sheet tackle all together before the yard gets attached. The plans say the sheet went though blocks at the mast. I've seen the iron sheet blocks that EdT made for the Young America, and I saw a similar sheet block on the lovely 1/2 scale Lagoda in New Bedford. I don't think one would look out of place on the KC. 
 
I'm not ready to try and make one out of metal as Edt did, but I think I can fashion one out out of a combination of styrene and wood. 
The Truss holding the lower yard is also something I need to figure out. Right now I have the truss pinned to the mast, between two syrene plates with holes in them epoxied to the mast band. 
 
Here's what the truss looks like on the Lagoda. You can see it below, in the upper right of the picture.  

Here's mine, pinned to the mast.

I'm hoping I can make the same sort of fixture with syrene on the yard bands and wedge the truss between them and pin it. Attaching that sling chain to the mast is going to be a challenge as well. That's straight forward, but it sure is a small space to be working in. 
 
Jackstays, lift and brace eyes and blocks, reef tackle eyes and blocks, Flemish horse eye in the ends of the yard, stirrups, footrope, bunt and leech line blocks attached to the jackstay...I think that about covers everything needed on the lower yard. 
 
Time to get busy. I guess I'll start with some sheave holes and all the eyebolts. Then the jackstay and then some paint. 
 

A few looks at the gaff and boom now complete. Special thanks to @michaelmys for explaining how that peak halyard rig works. Both ends belay to the pin rail on opposite sides, starboard side directly  the the pin rail, port side with a take up tackle. It appears that the hauling end was used to raise the gaff to certain point, then made fast, and then the take up tackle side was used to further raise the gaff to position, the tackle giving it that added power needed. 



If you look closely at the above photo, you can see somehow I managed to rig the throat halyard and bring the hauling end down on the wrong side. 😣. I don't think it will bother me enough to go in and re-rig it.  It will probably cause more harm than good trying to get in that tight space now. At the end of the gaff, you can see I hooked the sheet to the gaff topsail halyard.
 
Completed boom and gaff

That brings me to here....

Long way to go, but it's starting to feel like I can see the finish line.  On to the yards!!