Tomculb

On to the mizzen assembly. To my eye it really looks like an odd one. Spray was originally rigged as a sloop, and Slocum converted it to a yawl in Brazil part way through his famous voyage. The kit’s plans show how to rig her as a sloop if desired (longer boom and bowsprit and correspondingly larger main and jib), and I have to admit I had a few moments of regret that I didn’t opt to do that. I think she’s a prettier boat as a sloop, but as a yawl more . . . interesting. First thing I did was to use my jeweler’s saw to cut out the bottom mast bracket, which attaches to the bottom of the transom (the kit doesn’t include a laser cut one). With practice I think I’m getting better at using this tool, and I’m beginning to wonder how I got along without it. I added some pins to give it some additional strength attached to the transom. Next I dry fitted the Britannia “yoke” to the sides of the hull at the stern. It slopes back at maybe a 25° angle. The top mast bracket is an integral part of this fitting, which presented a couple of issues. As cast, the bracket sticks out perpendicular to the plane of the yoke, which means it angles down rather than being horizontal when the yoke is installed. I wasn’t sure I could bend it, but in an exchange of messages, Mr. BlueJacket assured me that Brittania isn’t brittle and bends easily. He of course was right. Second issue was that the hole in the upper mast bracket was filled with a big glob of Britannia metal. There was a hole barely large enough to get my jeweler’s saw blade through, and I was able to cut out a hole. A little filing with a rat tail file and I had a hole large enough to slide the bottom of the mast through. The mizzen spars I tapered with a sanding pad and my electric drill, as I had with the main spars. Similarly, I stained the mast with Minwax English Oak, painted the ends of the mast white, and painted the boom and gaff, along with the Britannia fittings, entirely white. I then attached to the gaff a wire bale to attach it to the mast and an eyebolt for the halyard. Next I tied the sail (finished months ago) to the gaff and boom, in the same manner as the main. Of course no boat with a transom is complete without its name and home port on the transom, and the kit supplies a decal for that purpose. I decided I better put it on before getting the mast in place. I’m quite certain that the last time I put a decal on anything was close to sixty years ago, so I approached this with some caution. The kit is supplied with two small iterations of “Spray” for the bow and “Spray Boston” in much larger letters for the transom. I sacrificed the smaller ones for some practice runs on a scrap piece of wood, and as advised by a YouTube video I found, I put a coat of satin varnish on before one decal and not the other. The varnish didn’t do anything positive that I could determine. More online advice was to put a couple of coats of matte finish (polyurethane in my case) to give the gloss decal a flatter or more matte appearance. I tried it and didn’t notice that it made much difference, although the decal proved to be less glossy in appearance than I feared, with or without the matte finish. There was also advice to cut the decal as close to the letters as possible, which made a lot of sense and which I did to a slight extreme (note the left side of the “B” in some of the pictures below). Probably the most important thing I realized in sliding the decals on to the transom is that if it ran a wet finger along the transom before putting the decals on, they slid around easily enough that sliding them into place exactly where I wanted was pretty easy. To determine exactly where I wanted I fashioned the guide you can see in the pictures below. Now back to the yoke. I decided that it wouldn’t look good, and wouldn’t have sufficient structural strength (at least on the real thing) unless the ends on either side were flush against the hull. To do that, I had to cut notches in the cap rail and the rub rail on either side. I think that took more psychological fortitude than real effort. Then I had to bend and coax the the yoke into a shape and position such that i) the mizzen mast was perfectly vertical port and starboard, ii) the mast had a slight rake aft to match the main mast, iii) the ends were in fact more or less flush against the hull, and iv) the yoke looked somewhat symmetrical when viewed from astern. This took at least an hour to two of work, with sufficient focus that I forgot to take any pictures along the way. Here it is glued in place, along with the wishbone, and two belaying pins in place. Backtracking on the wishbone, it is cantilevered way out beyond the transom, so I put a couple of pins in to strengthen its attachment to the taffrail. Next project was the fashioning of two brackets to which the mizzen shrouds and two hand railings will be attached. These were not supplied as laser cut pieces. I laminated some ⅛” stock together and without a great deal of cutting and sanding got pretty much what I wanted. After attaching the boom, gaff and sail to the mast, I decided to put some effort into making some realistic looking coils for the ends of the halyard and the sheet. I cut the halyard off at the cleat, then made a few coils out of what I cut off, wrapping the same to secure it. That makes sense for a halyard, which tends to be something you set and forget, but for a sheet, which may need frequent and sometimes sudden adjustment, you just want loose coils. Here I did not cut it at the cleat, but merely made some coils around the belaying pin, without wrapping them. In both cases, as can be seen below with regard to the sheet, I hung a small clamp to pull the coils into something more like a skinny oval rather than the almost circle shape the coils wanted to take. I then applied several drops of diluted white glue to the whole thing, and got the result I was hoping for. Hard to believe, but the light at the tunnel is getting noticeably brighter. Next, not necessarily in this order, are the handrails, shrouds, more rope coils, hawser and anchor.

I hope my response is not too late to be helpful. I finished the Model Shipways yacht America about a year and a half ago. The plans were more helpful that the ones you are working off of (at least what you have shown us), and I simply followed the plans. Below are photos that might help. The first three I took a few minutes ago, the final one two years ago. What your plans show as a couple of blocks at the top of the mast my plans identified as a "rigging screw", and depicted what I have always known as a turnbuckle. I have done a lot of sailing over the years, and seen many boats with headstays, shrouds and the like tensioned with turnbuckles at either end of the cable, but I've never seen an arrangement quite like what the America apparently had. The kit didn't come with a tiny turnbuckle, so a fashioned a reasonable imitation out of wire. What appears to be the one of two bobstays that is not adjustable is actually the lower end of the headstay, which runs through a sheave (I just drilled a hole) in the bowsprit. I don't know why the other one is adjustable; I can't think of any reason to have it anything other than very taut.

The stays for the bowsprit are chain. As supplied the chain is brass, of course, so first thing I did was dip it in Blacken-It to blacken it. The kit supplies four pad eyes, that are larger than the supplied eyebolts, and I used three of them to attach the chains to the hull. The other ends attach to the ring already affixed to the bowsprit. The instructions suggest using fine gauge wire to attach the chains. I’m not sure I have wire that is fine enough to fit through a link in this chain, and I have no confidence in my ability to bend the wire deftly enough to make the attachment look realistic. Instead I used my fly tying thread, wrapping it twice through the eye and the last link on the chain, tying a tiny square knot, and adding a drop of diluted white glue before cutting off the loose ends of thread. That seemed to work pretty well. Then onto the cabins and the dinghy. I built and set them aside about ten months ago; nice to be able to now install them on deck.The first thing that needed to be done was to sand the bottoms of the for and aft walls of each cabin, which are straight as built, to fit the curved camber of the deck. Others have mentioned that there doesn’t seem to be enough room for the cabins, dinghy and the barrels as depicted in the plans. The reason is that the plans show a slightly smaller dinghy, that is slightly tapered at the stern as one would normally expect. The supplied parts for the dinghy show no taper at the stern. As explained in the instructions and described in Slocum’s book, the dinghy was built by cutting a longer dory in half and attaching a new transom, so the stern on this boat (contrary to what is shown in the plans) is wide, being the midships point on the boat it was constructed from. With a fair amount of dry fitting, and primarily nudging the forward cabin a little farther forward, I got it all to fit. The water barrels come nicely turned (nice because I don’t own a lathe). I stained them with the same Minwax English Oak I used on the deck. I then used a black Sharpie pen to paint the bands on them. I test painted on some basswood, and found the pen ink bled badly into the wood creating pretty messy strips. The barrel wood is denser and probably less susceptible to bleeding, but before using the pen, I gave the barrels a coat of matte polyurethane, then applied the ink, which didn’t bleed at all. Access to the forward cabin from the starboard side is a little tight, but I think Slocum will manage it. Next was construction of the pinrail attached to the front of the front cabin. Building the pinrail was straightforward, except that I made the legs a little shorter than the the height of the ledge I glued to the front of the cabin, since the plans show the pinrail parallel to the water line rather than parallel to the deck. I cut about half an inch off a couple of steel pins, drilled holes for those tips in the legs, poked the deck with the pins, and then drilled holes in the deck to accept the tips of the pins, all to help with alignment when I was ready to glue it in place to to add a little strength. Once the pinrail was in place but not glued, I lined up the forward cabin with it and glued the cabin in place. Note that the pinrail extends a bit forward of the mast, contrary to the plans, but enabling the water barrels to be installed with a little room to get around them. Incidentally what is shown in the pictures below is not the mast but another quarter inch dowel I had available. Before gluing the pinrial in place, I needed to install the mast. Up to this point the mast and mainsail assembly have spent most of their lives dry fitted in a short piece of 2 by 4. As mentioned previously, the mast is ¼ inch, as shown on the plans, rather than 5/16” as supplied and described in the inventory. The Britannia mast boot is designed for the larger diameter, and I discovered that the difference in size is noticeable. So I took a short length of the tape I used for the waterline, wrapped it around the mast at the appropriate place, and painted it white. In the third picture below, you can see that I painted the brass belaying pins flat brown, put a few of them in the pinrail, and tied down the main and peak halyards. Coiled line will be hung on those belaying pins later. With the mast assembly in place, I then rigged the main sheet. The kit contemplates a 2 to 1 purchase (no double blocks supplied), but that just didn’t seem adequate for poor Mr. Slocum. I made it 3 to 1, and then added another block and cleat amidships. Totally the creation of my imagination; I have no idea how it was done on the original Spray, and it’s not evident from the plans. In the pictures you can see that I tied a ring on the block attached to the traveler, and a slightly smaller one for the block attached to the bale on the boom. To give the impression of wind pulling the sheet taut, I rigged some temporary thread to pull the boom outward, then put several drops of diluted white glue on the sheet, which dried sufficiently stiff to push the boom out and make the sheet taut. Finally, the jib. As I did with the mast, I used (thinner) thread to create something akin to mast hoops to fit around the headstay. Instead of a dowel, I used thick (maybe 1mm) wire to wrap the thread around. You can get an idea of the finished product in the picture. I wanted to seize both ends of the headstay to their respective fittings. I know how to seize the end of real rope and I have done so many times, but to use it at this scale is for me an exercise in frustration. Instead I tied some thinner thread around both pieces of headstay, then tied about 10 half hitches around both lines, to simulate seizing. The result is a little messier than true seizing, but small enough to be a reasonable facsimile of the true thing. I gave a little thought (probably overthought) to how to attach the tack and the halyard block, since on a real boat those two attachments would be just inside the places where the headstay attaches. I didn’t want the sail to deflect the headstay any more than necessary. In both cases I tied the sail and the block to the the same fitting the stay is attached to, but wrapped some fine thread around the mast and the bowsprit and the attaching thread, so as to bring the point of attachment down (as to the halyard block) and in (as to the tack) from the point of attachment of the headstay. I will probably paint white the thread wrapped around the mast, and may try the same with regard to the thread around the bowsprit, but in the latter case I’ll give some thought to the risk of getting paint on one of the stay chains. Finally (for this installment) before installing the jib, I tied a couple of small blocks onto the clew, giving Slocum a 2 to 1 purchase on the jib sheets. Hard to imagine that would be enough without winches. Per the plans, I ran the sheet through a block just inboard of the stanchion to which the forward chainplates are attached, and then back to a pair of cleats either side of the aft cabin. The latter not per the plans, as they do not provide any guidance on where to lead the sheets. One of the benefits of having run the cordage for the sheets through some water is that it was easier to give them a somewhat realistic look without regard to how taut they were pulled. Minimal tautness made the leeward sheet look nice and taut. The loose windward sheet came out of its clew block a bit too stiff (the two ends of the sheet came out of the block in something of an arc, rather than falling pretty straight to the deck), but I applied a little tension with a clamp, put a drop of diluted white glue on either side of the block, and got the look I wanted. As I write this I'm just getting started on the unusual mizzen assembly. Next installment . . .

My first step in attaching the main to its spars was putting together something that looks somewhat like mast hoops. The kit-supplied brass rings to me just look way too big and heavy, even if they are cut to create a smaller diameter. I used thread instead, tying it around a slightly larger dowel (the 5/16” one that came with the kit) than the ¼” one I used for the mast. I used heavily diluted white Elmer's School Glue on the hoops (and on the knots of course) to encourage the hoops to maintain their round shape, and slipped the hoops off the dowel when the glue was mostly dry, but not so dry as to be difficult to get them off the dowel. The forgoing description sounds quite a bit simpler than what really occurred. I spent at least a couple of hours finding just the right thread. Too thin and it didn’t maintain the desired round shape; too thick and the knots became enormous and unwieldy. Once I found the Goldilocks thread -- not too thin, not too thick -- it went pretty smoothly. Also I found the dowel to be a little larger than I wanted, so I wrapped the thread quite loosely around a spare ¼” dowel, which seemed to be about right. The hoops are a little looser than appears in the photo below, which is what I hoped for. The plans show the mainsail lashed to the boom and gaff with a spiral of line running the length of the spar. Boats of that era I have seen (or more likely replicas) are tied on with a bunch of separate lines, tied parallel to each other. Though my experience is limited in that regard, I decided I liked the look of the latter better, and at the risk of being historically inaccurate, that is how I proceeded. Now to do some rigging, namely the main halyard and the peak halyard. The kit comes with some good looking (i.e. looking like rope) thread, but it’s white and must be dyed. I have lots of thread of different thicknesses and color, left over from previous builds and pilfered from my wife’s sewing box (she hasn’t sewed anything in decades), and it wasn’t hard to find some I liked. I also read somewhere in the last few weeks that all the kinks and coils thread seems to have off the spool disappear if you wet the thread and then let it dry. Maybe I’m the only person on these boards who didn’t know that, but somehow that bit of useful knowledge had escaped me. It makes a big difference: The kit comes with britannia metal blocks which need to be trimmed and painted, but I have a lot of wooden blocks left over from previous builds, and I prefer the look of natural wood. The kit also supplies some wire for stropping the blocks. I tried wire some years ago and failed miserably. But I have some thin but very strong fly tying thread that for me works very well. The thread isn’t too large to scale as the wire would be (imho), and with a drop of diluted white glue on the knots, they hold well even after you cut the excess thread off right next to the knot (although I have certainly cut a few too close to the knot). I try to tie the blocks on so they will line up with the course of the rigging running through them, but blocks and knots can be stubborn sometimes, and holding one in the proper alignment while a drop of glue absorbs and dries can be very helpful. I mentioned in a previous post finding the mast bands to be a little smaller than I felt the mast diameter should be at the top. When I bought some Chartpak black tape to do the water line, I also bought some narrower (1/16”), flat white tape to simulate the mast bands at the top of the mast. Back to the mast hoops, they ended up on the mast at a variety of angles, but with some gentle clamping and more drops of diluted glue, I got them all pretty close to being parallel with the water line. I see that one appears to need a little more persuasion. The kit comes with two large cleats, and the only place cleats are shown on the plans is on either side of the boom, one for the outhaul, and one for the toppinglift. It doesn’t seem to me that cleats of that size would ever be put on a boom, and I found some smaller left overs from previous builds to put on the boom, and also at the foot of the mast for the downhaul. Dampening some black thread helped make it hang slack as the toppinglift (which would never be taught while the main is raised), but unfortunately I ended up with some waviness at the top I will have to work on. The rigging of the downhaul shown below is strictly the product of my imagination. I don't know whether a typical downhaul of that era would attach to the boom or the sail, but attaching it to the sail would entail getting it around the boom jaws, so I attached it to the boom. Next up -- deck furniture, then jib and headstay.

Looks like you've done a great job overcoming your challenges. And I like the color of your deck. Keep up the good work.

This post is all about sails. My first build with sails was my most recently completed one, the yacht America. That kit didn’t come with any sail material, so when I bought my Spray kit from BlueJacket, I also ordered some additional material. It came off-white in color, which looked really good to me, and I didn’t do anything to dye it or otherwise mess with its color. I have never been a big fan of sewing sails, because the stitching to me looks out of scale (even in museums). And although I think we have a sewing machine somewhere, it hasn’t seen the light of day in decades, I don’t have a clue as to where it is, and I have no idea how to use it. So what follows is my methodology for making sails without sewing, using glue to make hems that enclose bolt ropes. Undoubtedly there are reasons why it won’t work for lots of people, but it has worked well for me. For those who don’t want to sew, Ben Lankford’s instructions to America suggest as an alternative using an iron-on fabric glue product called Wonder Under. When I Googled that, what came up instead was something called HeatnBond, which comes in a 15 foot roll (I have used less than a foot for two sets of sails) for about $8. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The fabric was a little wrinkled, but a little ironing made quick work of that. My wife suggested putting a damp dish towel on top of the fabric to prevent scorching it with her iron, and she undoubtedly saved me from having to order more material from BlueJacket. Next I cut sail templates out of heavy construction paper, starting with tracing the plans, but then comparing with the boat as built, trimming and adjusting to assure the finished sails will fit correctly. Once I was confident of that, I traced the sail outlines in pencil on the fabric. I started with the mizzen, and I took more pictures of putting that sail together than either of the others. The first thing I did was to cut a few ½” strips from the roll of HeatnBond and apply it to the outline of the sail. The product has paper on one side and glue on the other. The instructions say to iron it onto the fabric, paper side up, applying the heat for no more than about 2 seconds in any given place. I did this with my hobby iron (in one of the photos above), not my wife’s iron. 😊The process is actually pretty easy. After gluing in place, I drew a ¼” outline all the way around. Although I think both sides of the sail end up looking pretty good, the side without the hem is better, and I made the sails having decided that the starboard side of the boat will be my display side. That meant the sails needed to be constructed port side up, folding the hems onto the port side. Although I put a large “P” on the port side of each construction paper template, when I traced the outline for the jib onto the fabric, I neglected to notice the absence of a “P”, an error I didn’t notice until after I had glued the strips onto the fabric, necessitating an irritating do-over (what is in the photos) for the sails to be consistent. Next using my X-Acto knife I cut out the sail along its ¼” border (which will be folded over to create a ¼” hem). Cutting the fabric and glue strip together yielded a much cleaner cut than all other ways I tried cutting the fabric. Also, I had to put some real thought into cutting notches at the corners. I decided I wanted both hems to overlap at each corner, so as to create some reinforcement (similar to a real sail). To create the hem, I folded the glue strip over onto the main part of the sail (as can be seen in one of the photos above). With the paper still attached, it’s much easier to create a straight fold then just folding fabric. For a bolt rope, I used some heavy thread (or maybe more correctly called light string or cord), stretched taught to be sure it’s straight. I then peeled off the paper and ironed the hem in place over the bolt rope. This time the instructions say apply the iron more slowly, about 8 seconds in each section. Note the sheet of wood between the sail and the cork board, to protect the latter from the heat. On those edges of the sail not attached to a spar (leech of all three sails, plus foot of the jib and luff of the mizzen), instead of a bolt “rope” I used thin copper wire, so that I could bend some shape into the finished sail. At the head of the jib, I bent a small loop of the wire (blackened) to create the kind of halyard attachment I’m used to seeing on sails (I have no idea whether that’s historically correct, but I like the look). Final step was to use a colored pencil (a shade of brown) to draw panels on the sails. There is a photo of Spray online, and I used it, rather than the plans, to determine the layout of the panel stitching, or so I thought. Looking at the photo again later, I don't think the panels on the jib are similar to those on the main and mizzen,but that's the way they'll be on my Spray. Next up, attaching the sails to the spars.

Ken, your build is coming along very nicely. A little paint and that hull is going to look really great!

Thank you Bob. I have taken an occasional look at your Pen Duick build and it looks spectacular. The work you did on that hull makes me very glad Spray was an old work boat, not a racing boat. Although it doesn't appear that you're back to work on the model yet, it's encouraging to see you posting comments on these forums. Hope you're back at the model table soon. Speaking of racing, I have been absolutely transfixed following the Vendee Globe solo around the world race. Given the huge differences in technology and goals, it's sometimes difficult to imagine any similarities between what Slocum did and what these guys and gals are doing, but there is definitely a common spirit, and a monumental amount of courage, in both cases. Slocum didn't have the instant communication, shore team and weather reports these people do, but he also wasn't slamming into 20 foot waves at 25 knots with boats that are proving to be more fragile than Spray was. Of the 33 starters, 5 have dropped out already, 1 dismasted, and 4 with structural/foil damage. Among the latter was a hull that split in two just ahead of the mast and led to its skipper spending 11 hours, most in the dark, in a life raft before he was rescued by a competitor. If you haven't done so already, search for "Vendee Globe tracking map", and turn on the option that shows the winds they are dealing with. As someone who once spent many hours and days racing sailboats, I find it absolutely fascinating. Sorry for the off-topic diversion.

Thank you Chris. Now the final photo is the one I intended. And thank you Josh. Will be interested to see your signature line when "TBD" is replaced by the name of your next build. ⛵

Funny . . . . that last photo doesn't belong there, I've gone into Edit mode twice to delete it, and I won't go away. 😑

Some more small projects completed. The taffrail has been cut and dry fitted in place for some time. With the steering gear completed (other than gluing the wheel on), time to finish the taffrail as well. I bent the traveler from a brass rod, and blackened it with (remarkably enough) Blacken-It. I bought a bottle of the stuff over 20 years ago, and have at least half left. I dilute it in water about 50/50, and use it over and over again. Works great. The sheet will come down to a block at the rear of the taffrail, then run forward amidships to a cleat. The plans refer to a belaying pin but don’t say where it is; I decided I liked my rig better. The traveler isn’t glued in yet, since a block will be slipped onto it later, with some kind of bale. Next I started work on the spars, the mast first. The plans call for tapering the top 4”, but I decided on a more even taper most of the length. The instructions suggest using a hobby knife to cut the tapered portion into a tapered octagon, then sand it back round. I just don’t trust myself making long cuts with a sharp object. Instead I wrapped tape around the base of the mast, stuck it into my cordless drill, and sanded away. The sanding pad I used, which was several years old, didn’t survive very well but the mast came out just fine. The supplied mast bands contemplate a dramatic narrowing of the mast at the top, more than appeared reasonable to me, especially since the shrouds go all the way to the top, without the spreaders you would find on a modern boat of this size. I think Slocum would have wanted something a bit more substantial than wobbly spaghetti at the top. At least that was my rationale for limiting the amount of taper. The truth of the matter is that I got tired of sanding. I decided I could make reasonable mast bands with tape (I ended up ordering narrower tape than what is shown on the test spar in the picture below). Next up: the Donut Project. The plans call for a ring around the mast to hold the boom jaws up when the mainsail is not raised. The instructions suggested simply wrapping tape around the mast, but I thought I could come up with something better. I almost bit off more than I could chew. I cut out a small piece from some 3/32” sheet, then tried to drill a ¼” hole in it. I was smart enough to start with a small bit (1/16”) and gradually, bit by bit, work up to ¼”. I also sandwiched the target piece between two other pieces, clamped together. But the clamps weren’t tight enough, and things started sliding around. And the result was a mess. But nothing some filing and sanding couldn’t fix, or at least improve upon. Then I got out my jewelers scroll saw and tried to cut a nice circle about 1/16” larger than the drill hole. The result wasn’t pretty. But after some sanding, and twice breaking this little thing in half, I got a Donut which, when largely hidden by the boom jaws, won’t look all that bad. On to the boom and gaff jaws. I mentioned previously that while the kit supplies a 5/16” dowel for the mast, as drawn on the plans the mast is ¼”, and that’s the size dowel I decided to use. Which meant that the laser cut boom jaws were too large. As an aside, just about all of the spars as drawn are slightly slimmer than the designated dowels; the main boom as drawn and as used by me is 3/16”, but the supplied dowel is 1/4”. Which meant both ends of the boom jaws were too wide. So I took some more 3/32” sheet and my trusty jewelers saw, and cut one out more to my liking. I’m still learning how to use that saw, but I’m getting better. And this time while sanding I managed to break the jaws only once. I had no choice but to cut out my own gaff jaws, as the kit doesn’t supply a laser cut one. That’s undoubtedly because the jaws bend up at close to a 60° angle. I used 3/32" sheet rather than the 1/8" called for. This time my precision sawing turned out pretty good. I then cut the jaws in half where the intended bend is, sanded the newly cut end of one piece, and glued them back together. The bend ended up at closer to 45° but I can live with that. The photograph of a completed model on the kit box shows the spars painted (the instructions say paint the same color as the inside of the bulwarks), while a photo on the BlueJacket website shows the gaffs and booms white and white trim at the top and bottom of the main mast. I decided to do the latter, staining most of the mast with Minwax Golden Oak. No particular reason; it just seemed more interesting that way. Last post I said I was going to do without a waterline stripe, and Nic suggested considering using vinyl tape. I did a little research, found people like something called Chartpak for such purposes, and I ordered some (3/32” wide). My biggest concern was that it would stick more or less permanently, and I would risk peeling off paint if I tried to adjust it while putting it on. Not the case, fortunately; if anything, it’s not sticky enough. I used a drop of glue at the bow end of the hull (not on the stem), then used a single piece for each side of the hull, using a little bit of tension to get it to bend smoothly around the necessary curves. Used another drop of glue at the transom. It was actually a lot easier to do than I feared. I did have some problems on the stem though, leaving a gap where two very short strips from each side were supposed to come together, that I found difficult to cover with tape. I gave up on the tape and dabbed it with a black Sharpie felt pen, and it doesn’t look too bad. Fortunately it’s not in an area that is easy to see when the model is displayed on its stand, and an eyepad and chain running from that very spot to the bowsprit will conceal it a bit more. Next project . . . . sails.

Very nicely done Josh, definitely a build to be proud of. Averaging maybe 5 hours a week, I doubt that I will have finished my Spray before maybe mid-winter, but who knows. Regardless of the pace, she is certainly a fun build. I'll be interested to see what you choose to build next. Happy Thanksgiving.

Thanks Josh. I do like to use color sometimes to highlight detail, but I have to be careful not to overdo it and not stray too far from what has at least some chance of being historically accurate. As to the latter of course, as Nic mentioned on your log, we have to rely mostly on speculation when it comes to Spray, since there is so little authoritative material to rely on. Also, I stumbled upon your profile recently, and it appears that we are at opposite ends of the same state. I'm in Spokane.

Nic, I did give some thought to vinyl tape, but not having any handy, I moved on thinking I'd come back to the idea, but I had kind of forgotten all about it. Thanks for suggesting it. Taping the water line would have the additional advantage of covering the occasional ragged edge I have now. Doing a little digging in these forums, Chartpak tape came up several times. And some suggest adding a coat of polyurethane or shellac to make sure it adheres indefinitely. Any recommendations on the subject?

A note on my previous post (painting the hull). I had thought I was going to paint a waterline stripe, but seeing how the tape I used struggles with sharper curves, and foreseeing the difficulty of making two strips of tape manage those curves at a precise distance apart (say 3/32”), Spray will just have to do without a waterline stripe. I also realize that I approached that feature incorrectly. I should have started my painting with a black, imprecise but wider (say ¼”) stripe, then covered it with a single strip of tape of the chosen width, then painted white above the tape and anti-fouling maroon below. Problem with that, though, is whether I could get the white to adequately cover the black of the waterline. An issue to be addressed on a future build, and who knows, maybe this will be my last one with white topsides. I think I am now at the beginning of the most fun part of the build, where accomplishments and projects take weeks or days (or even hours) rather than the year it took me to complete the hull. 😃 While still painting the hull, I took a few breaks to work on the taffrail (or is it more properly a taff“deck”?). I cut it from some 3/32” stock, using the edge of the sheet of wood for the rear edge, my fine tooth crosscut saw for the sides, and an X-Acto knife for the longer, forward edge (which was pretty easy, going with the grain). I then used a couple of scraps to build shelves under the inner edges of the toprails, and dry fitted it into place. Of course I still had to cut the curved line I traced on the leading edge, a little more of a challenge. A few weeks earlier, noticing that one of the gaff jaws and the two “brace brackets” (that will one day extend aft of the transom) are oddly not laser cut, I bought myself a jewelers coping saw online. It came with 120(!) blades, and reading a bit about this tool, I learned that it is not a question of whether you will break a blade, but rather how frequently you will do so. Thus well-informed, I picked a courser one of the blades, and began sawing along the line I had traced from the plans. I quickly realized that following that line precisely will take some practice, so I erred outside the line and ended up with a rough approximation. The sawing was actually easy and quick, just a little ragged. That was remedied with some sanding, and the end result was pretty good. And I didn’t even break a blade! At about the same time (before the rudder was installed), I eyeballed where the top of the rudder post should penetrate the deck (not that it actually will penetrate the deck). Handy thing to have done that, some weeks later when I was ready to install the steering apparatus. Next project, affixing the stand (assembled kit parts), while I am still comfortable turning the boat upside down. Not having a drill press, I wasn’t confident of my ability to drill holes straight from the bottom of the stand’s end pieces all the way up and into the hull. And I don’t think I have any screws that are both thin and long enough to work that way. Instead, I took a couple of small nails with sharp points, cut the heads off, drilled very small holes in the notches in each end piece, and pushed the nails in, point up. I had previously established where the stand needs to attach to the hull for the waterline to be horizontal. I then turned the stand upside down and pressed it against the hull at the appropriate place, resulting in two precisely spaced pin pricks in the bottom of the hull. Then using a trick I came up with on my previous build (Model Shipways America), I drilled the starter holes in the hull and the stand just enough larger to be able to force a couple of short pieces of 1/16” OD brass tubing in. Not as secure as screws, but no way the stand and hull are going to separate without some intentional effort. Now on to that steering assembly. A couple of months ago I posted a picture of some of it assembled and dry fitted on deck. It took a little more work than I expected to build all the pieces, but I had numerous opportunities to do it when the only alternative was watching paint dry. The most interesting piece to build was the rudder post cap, with the tiller sticking out astern. You will notice two pieces of brass rod (one blackened) . . . . as Bob Garcia (a frequent contributor to these forums) appends to his posts, “Measure once, cuss twice.” The first issue that bothered me is that when you pull, from a fixed point, something that will describe an arc when pulled, as you pull less and less of the force is pulling it along the arc, and more and more of the force is trying, in this case, to pull the tiller off the rudder post cap, until you reach a point where none of the force is pulling along the arc anymore. An engineer (of which I am not) could probably describe that problem better. The problem is very counter productive here, because the more you move a rudder away from the centerline, the greater the force of the water against it. To reduce that inefficiency, I decided that the outer blocks needed to be ahead of the end of the tiller, not directly abeam of it. But put too far ahead, the line would rub against the aft corners of the aft deckhouse, and even short of that, the farther forward I put those blocks, the more likely Joshua would trip over the lines (I should probably give him more credit than that). I finally decided that I would affix those blocks to the furthest aft stanchion (other than the one in the aft corner). But that created a new problem. The lines leading to the drum would be approaching the drum at an angle, with the force eventually pulling the line forward and off the drum. So I decided to add a block on each side of the drum, so the line would load on and off the drum at a 90 degree angle. Brilliant I thought, until after I put those additional blocks in, and realized that they were in the path of the end of the tiller! So much for thinking things through. At least I think the helm can be put over to about 45 degrees without any significant interference. A couple of additional observations. Before I got started I decided I wasn’t capable to rigging this with only one line, as would be the case on the real boat. My fingers just aren’t small enough to take the line attached to the end of one block, lead it through a couple more blocks, wrap it around the drum, then back through some more blocks, and then (the real challenge) attach to the end of the block on the opposite stanchion, all while maintaining the appropriate amount of tension. So I used two lines, and with each one I took three wraps around the drum, hung the ends over the side of the boat with mini clamps attached to add some tension (see the picture above), and covered the lines on the drum with white glue heavily diluted with water. After letting it dry thoroughly, I snuck some sharp scissors under the drum and cut each line where the cut couldn't be seen. It held! Incidentally, the wheel in the pictures above is not yet glued in place. Seems likely it will get snagged on something quite easily, so I won't glue it on until later in the build. Second observation, and for me this took some considerable mental gymnastics. The line(s) wraps around the drum from the underside rather than over the top. Visualize this--turn the wheel to starboard and the drum pulls on the line on its starboard side (if that line wraps around it from below) and releases line on the other side. Pulling on that starboard line pulls on the tiller, which then moves to starboard. Since the tiller is attached to the back side of the rudder post (the opposite of every other tiller I’ve ever seen), it pulls the rudder (which is directly below it) to starboard, turning the boat to starboard. It took me a lot longer to convince myself I was right about that than it took me to write this paragraph.

Nic puts it so well. Filler, sanding and paint do wonders; they certainly conceal a lob of unsightly gaffs in my Spray build. When I look at the logs of people building hulls that will remain natural and unpainted, I'm just in awe of what they are able to do. Keep up the good work.

Thanks for all the kind words of encouragement. I believe there are now five active Spray logs on these forums, and for every such log there have to be many boats being built by people who quietly sit on the sidelines or who aren't even aware that this website exists. I started my build a year ago so I can't say I was inspired by the Vendee Globe, but following the race now certainly puts an interesting perspective on Slocum's voyage. Or maybe it's the other way around. Working from home now due to the pandemic, between the race website open in a window behind what I'm supposed to be working on, and my model bench in another corner of the same room, it certainly is easy to be distracted.

Nic, thanks from me too, because I was wondering the same thing. The fittings include a couple of large cleats, which I had planned to put on the deck a little forward of where you have the blocks for the steering apparatus. If not that, what are the cleats for and where do they go? Also with regard to the jib sheet, I had planned to attach a couple of blocks to the clew, start the sheets at the blocks on deck, run them up to the sheets blocks on the sail, and back to the blocks on deck before running aft. That jib seems like a lot of sail to pull in without the help of some block and tackle. Do you think I'd be wrong in doing that?

Not many pictures in this post, but yesterday I reached a major milestone--I completed painting the hull. I put something like three coats of white on the entire hull, then followed with another three or four down to a bit below where the waterline would be. Then came masking the waterline. I made photocopies of the plans showing the bow and stern from the side, then cut out templates I could put up against the stem and stern. The waterline having thus been marked at each end, I used the gadget pictured below to connect the dots, so to speak. I must have bought this thing 20 odd years ago, and have now used it a grand total of three times. I have a roll of Tamiya 6mm (1/8th inch) masking tape that worked pretty well following the gently curved part of the waterline. I have some nameless, much older tape that is half that wide, and it handled the sharper curve (where moving forward the bow bends inward toward the stem) quite well . . . until I lifted it off the hull to reposition it, and it pulled a bubble of paint with it. To touch, it feels noticeably stickier than the wider tape, and I decided I had no choice but to not use it. Using three or four pieces of the wider Tamiya tape to make the curve left me concerned that the bend wouldn’t be a smooth one, and I found it all but unavoidable to leave a tiny wrinkle here and there. I had bought some Model Shipways “Hull Copper Red” to use below the water line, a color that I might more accurately describe as “plum purple.” Especially when wet it’s pretty ugly, but dry it does bear some resemblance to anti-fouling paint I’ve seen on many a sailboat. I read somewhere that anti-fouling paint was becoming an alternative to copper toward the end of the 19th century, so I figured this wouldn’t be too far off. This picture is after a couple of coats of the stuff. You can see where I had to use several pieces of the wider masking tape to make the curve. After three or four coats of the stuff, none of the white showed through any more, and it had become a solid consistent color (whatever that color was). So yesterday was the moment of truth, as I very slowly and carefully peeled off the tape. And low and behold, the waterline looked pretty good. There are a few small blemishes, a couple of larger ones that I will try to touch up, and a few more tiny ones that nobody but me (and perhaps others on this forum) will be likely to notice. The starboard side looks a little better. I cut out the laser-cut rudder a month or more ago, slightly tapered the leading edge and more aggressively tapered the rest, glued it to a 3/32” (I think) dowel/rudder post, and more recently gave it a coat or two of the purple plum paint Then after the first or second coat of the same paint on the hull, I used a fine toothed saw to cut a 3/32” deep and maybe ¾” long notch in the aft end of the keel. I then cut a short strip of 3/32” by 3/16” stock, drilled a hole in it to take the bottom of the rudder post, and then glued the whole thing in place. The pictures below were taken later, after the hull and rudder assembly were fully painted. The paint job on the hull right against the rudder looks much better in the first picture, and fortunately in real life, than it does in the second and third pictures. I was somewhat distressed with the bottom of the rudder post hole being noticeably off center, and put some effort into hiding that flaw with wood filler and sanding. Only once I was satisfied with the resulting camouflage did it dawn on me that the bottom of the keel is something no one will ever see once the boat is complete and affixed to its stand. I guess such is the compulsion of a ship model builder. Next up . . . affix that stand to the hull, or at least drill some holes in the keel for that purpose. Then get some deck furniture on board, followed by spars, sails and rigging. That pin prick of light at the end of the tunnel is indeed getting larger. ☺️

And I should have added that, yes, quite a few sessions of filling, sanding, filling again, sanding again . . .

Thanks Josh. I used to use Bondo, which someone on one of these forums recommended years ago. It is actually an auto body finish product, but it works very well in this context too. However, it has really noxious fumes (my wife would be downstairs and at the other end of the house and would complain when I used it). More recently I've used Elmer's WoodFiller, which works very well too, without the fumes. I picked that up at Ace Hardware.

A new, interesting challenge. I happened to notice while staring at the plans (something I find myself doing quite often) that the chainplates run against the hull underneath the rub rail and the cap rail. My immediate thought was “Oh [expletive deleted], I should have cut notches in those two rails before gluing them to the side of the hull.” But as I thought more about it, I wondered how difficult it might be to cut the notches exactly where needed in a boat-length strip of wood before it was attached to the hull, and would the notches weaken the strip where it needs to bend when glued to the hull? It would be just my luck to have a strip break as I am as I am bending the lengthy strip to the hull with a coat of drying glue on it. All academic of course since now I have no choice but to cut the notches after the rails are glued to the hull. So very carefully, timidly perhaps, I drilled a couple of very small holes in the caprail marking the ends of the first notch. Then I put a new blade in one of my X-Acto knives and gingerly connected the dots so to speak. Amazingly the end result was a notch I could slide the Britannia chainplate through. Now with a little too much confidence I made the second notch. As can be seen in the second photo below, the holes weren't drilled as close to the hull as they should have been, with the result that at the bottom of the notch there wasn’t much more than paint separating the notch from fresh air. The final two notches were done with a little more care. Next was the rub rail. After staring at it from all angles, I decided that would be pressing my luck. It undoubtedly could be done by drilling the starter holes from below, but we all know drilled exit holes don’t always appear exactly where planned. So I cut the chainplates at the top of the rub rail and figured no one looking at the finished product would ever know the difference. As can be seen above, the kit supplied fitting is a single piece, Britannia chainplate and deadeye together, and of course a Brittania colored deadeye just wouldn’t do. I decided I would paint the deadeyes the Flat Earth color discussed in a prior post, and paint the surrounding metal above the caprail black. Below the caprail the chainplate would be painted white to match the hull. In the photo below you can also see the notch I cut a little farther away from the hull than I should have. I found that I had some tiny nails that I could use to simulate bolt heads, so I drilled a couple of holes in each chainplate to put the nails through. I then put some glue on the back of the chainplates, slid them through their notches, and pressed them against the side of the hull for a minute or so while the glue dried. Then I grabbed the drill again and carefully drilled into the hull. The chainplates are placed outside two stanchions, so there was some depth to drill into. The first two times I did this, it dislodged the glued chainplate from the hull (in my impatience I probably didn’t let the glue dry long enough), so I had to hold the deadeye pretty tightly to hold the whole thing in place while drilling. Some of the paint rubbed off making my very careful paint job look pretty sloppy (but easily enough remedied). Oddly in the picture below, the chainplates don’t look as parallel as they really are. Another coat of paint on the upper half of the hull, and the whole thing is beginning to look pretty good. Daylight savings time just ended, and being a morning person, it's nice to look out the window when I get up and see some light. ☀️ 😎

So I left off having glued the rubrails in place, and giving some thought to the caprails. The outer caprails were pretty straightforward. . . . 1/16th by 3/32nd strips laid and glued against the hull. I chose to make them from a single strip, so that they would hopefully make a nice graceful curve matching the rub rails and the sheer line. Next I painted the inside of the bulwarks with Tamiya “Buff”, same color as the yet-to-be-installed waterways and the trim on the cabins. Before that I used a little wood filler on the bigger cracks in the bulwarks, but found sanding that area (inside of a concave curve) was a little more difficult than I anticipated. The next strip of the rail cap was another 1/16th by 3/32nd strip, but this time lying horizontal, on top of the stanchions. This also required some creative use of the iron and clamping, so that the horizontal strip didn’t flip vertical. Somehow it all worked. Here I did not use one continuous full length strip, but three shorter ones. You can see the painted inside of the bulwarks in these photos. Last came the inner rail, a single vertical 1/16th by 3/32nd strip. Sometimes difficult at the bow, but somehow I got it done. The tops of the completed rails definitely needed some filling and sanding, but that’s to be expected. What happened next was not expected. Before I installed the rubrails, I painted the hull below the sheerline with a couple of coats of a Tamiya primer. It went on well, was pretty easy to apply, but the fumes were nauseating. Fortunately I got it done outdoors before the weather turned (a cold spell this past weekend had highs below freezing). What I have learned more recently (elsewhere in these boards) is that you don’t want to use an oil-based base layer and then cover it with water-based acrylic. I did exactly that, painting an off-white from Model Shipways called “Warm White” over the primer. True white, like you’d find on many of today’s fiberglass yachts, just seemed too pristine for something Joshua Slocumb sailed around the world. No issues with the color choice. But when I tried to give the first coat a light sanding, instead of the dust I expected, the white came off in chips and strips. It did not adhere well to the primer coat at all. I sanded and scraped most of the first layer of white paint off. In the photo below, you can see that I also painted the outside of the bulwarks white, without first using the primer, and it went on and stayed on just fine. I then did some experimenting painting scrap sheets of wood. What seemed to work was several coats of the acrylic, with no sanding in between. That meant I had to be sure to keep paint drips from drying. The jury is still out, but I think this is working. The finished product probably won’t be as smooth as I would like, but I can always rationalize that Slocumb’s Spray probably wasn’t all that smooth either. Next I drilled the hawse holes in the forward bulwarks and the deck. Always makes me a bit nervous to drill anything more than the tiniest hole through a completed surface. Sure enough, I knocked a chip of wood out inside and aft of the port hole in the bulwarks. I should have tried to hold a block of wood against the inside as I drilled, which would have been easier if I had drilled the holes before putting the caprails on. Live and learn. Paint will somewhat disguise the flaw. In the process of gluing on the Brittania metal hawse hole lips, I dropped one, perilously close to the mast hole. The thought of trying to get it (or any other small fitting) out of the hull had it actually fell in the hole would be enough to keep me up at night. To prevent self-induced insomnia, I taped over the hole, as can be seen in the photos. I made what the plans refer to as the “bow block” out of three 3/16th square strips glued side by side. I cut the glued-together block roughly to the desired shape, then sanded to fit. 3/16th was a little too thick at the bow, so I tapered the whole thing a bit to lie appropriately on top of the bowsprit. Final project for this posting was the glue in the painted, construction paper waterways I so carefully cut out quite a few weeks ago. I debated whether to cut each one into three (or more?) sections, but after a couple of glueless practice runs, I decided I could do it safely with a single boat length piece. A used thinly applied wood glue (Gorilla brand), which gets tacky pretty quickly but takes a little while to truly set up. A bit stressful at times, but it all went in pretty well. I think painting the hull, including installing the rudder, is next.

Really enjoying your posts Josh, and great work! You're at a point where you are passing me, and moving at a much faster pace. Now I get to learn from your challenges and good work. I finished the cap rail, got a few coats of paint on the rails and hull, and this morning I glued in the waterways (or margin planks). I will do another post within the next week or so. Your blog is in the correct forum--1850 to 1900. When they changed the forums around, mine got put incorrectly into post 1900 for some reason. Incidentally, my mask rake seems to have worked out correctly when locating the hole as shown in the plans. The rake is definitely forward relative to the deck (which slopes upward at that point), but it is slightly aft relative to the waterline. Looking forward to more of your posts.

I'm learning that if I drag a photo to the "Drag files here to attached" area below, and then don't use it in my post, it gets added at the end anyway. Or at least that's what I think happens and explains the random photo at the end.