Tomculb

Thanks Matt. The glue held the gravel quite well. I turned everything upside down after the glue had dried, and only 2 or 3 individual stones fell out. Just to be sure, and probably unnecessary, I added a coat of matte polyurethane. As for the barrels, just last week two of them came loose and I pulled them out. Something of a blessing in disguise because it enabled me to see where the placeholder mast met the mast base, and I discovered I was not getting the screw I put in the end of the mast into the hole. I think I will leave those barrels out until I install the mast permanently, just so I can view what's going on in there.

At each deck level the place where the deck meets the sidewall is covered by a waterway (in the instructions referred to as a “stringer” at the orlop deck but everywhere else, including all decks in the plans, referred to as a “waterway”). Sanding the sidewalls to fit between the deck and the ribs above and then gluing them in place to the inside of the ribs, I wasn’t very careful about how the sidewall met (or didn’t meet) the deck, figuring gaps would be covered by the waterway. The waterways are supplied as curved laser-cut pieces (which need to be bevelled lengthwise to fit), and when I cut the two out for this deck, I discovered that due to my lack of care, the curve for the waterway was much greater than the curve where the deck and sidewall met. The discrepancy was great enough that the laser cut pieces simply wouldn’t work. So I cut a 1/16th” by 3/16th” strip and beveled it lengthwise with a Dremel to fit between the deck and the sidewall. Only problem was that I occasionally let the Dremel run off the end I wasn’t holding at the time, accidentally shaving off the corners resulting in a pointed end, which wouldn’t do at all. So I cut two new strips, about half an inch longer than needed, beveled them (again making a mess of the ends), painted them dark green, glued them in place, and cut off the excess. Also laser-cut are three “mast surrounds”, which not surprisingly surround the mast on the orlop, berthing and gun decks. As instructed, I shaped them and painted them the same dark green as the waterways. I slipped one of them onto the placeholder mast and slid it down to deck level, but I decided not to glue it in place just yet. I like to occasionally read a few pages ahead in the instructions to see what is coming up, and doing that I noticed a picture with the next deck glued in place and with a post midships on the orlop deck. The instructions don’t say anything about putting any posts at that deck level (unlike the posts in the hold) and the pictures don’t show a post there until the berthing deck is in place a few pages later. But the plans show 3 posts down the center line of the orlop deck. Reading ahead, the instructions get interesting. They say to shape 13 posts (or “stanchions” as they are referred to) from a 1/8th” dowel, then install 8 of them between the berthing deck and the beams above, and to set aside “the remaining four” to be installed on the gun deck. I pulled out my trusty HP 12C calculator and confirmed my suspicion that that left one unaccounted for. But even more puzzling reading ahead in the instructions about the gun deck (and doing a search in the digital version of the instructions), there is nothing said about installing four (or five) posts (or stanchions) on any other deck at all. The plans are more helpful, showing 3 posts on the gun deck, in addition to the 3 on the orlop deck. Adding those to the 8 shown in a picture of the berthing deck, it looks like I’ll need 14 of these things. I don’t own a lathe, but I fashioned a reasonable facsimile of one with my drill and a block of wood which conveniently has a lot of holes in it. I then shaped three of them for this deck, stained them with the same stains I used for the posts in the hold below, and set them aside to be glued in place later. That would be 3 down and 11 to go.

As soon as I saw this kit I decided that it would be my next build. Probably a bit early (I think I have at least a year to go on my present build),but it is different and historic enough that it really grabbed my attention. And I'm really glad you're doing build log ahead of me; I'm sure I'll learn a lot by following along.

I’m back in the shipyard and can report on my work on the orlop deck level. The instructions suggest using Model Shipways English Oak stain. I have an 8 ounce can of Minwax Golden Oak stain (which will probably last me a lifetime), which I used and liked on my Spray build, and I used that instead. I first applied a coat of stain conditioner, which is supposed to assure a uniform color when the stain is applied, but it didn’t seem to have much effect. The end result is not too bad though (better than the picture below once thoroughly dry), especially since the lower decks will only be partially visible. As with the hold, I used a diluted white paint on the walls, thin enough to let the etched detail show through. I have chosen to use actual planks for the deck on other builds, but the detail on this is good enough that it has overcome my bias against pre-printed sheets for decking. The lower mast is a 7/16” diameter by 16” long dowel. The kit also supplies another dowel about half that length to use as a placeholder while installing the decks and the pieces which surround the dowel on each deck. The instructions have you taper the lower 4” of the placeholder dowel to 3/8”, then carve and sand a 45 degree chamfer leading to a ¼” locating pin to fit in the already installed mast step. That seemed like a lot of work for a placeholder, and being lazy, I simply found a screw with a head diameter slightly less than ¼”, and screwed it into the bottom of the untapered dowel. I figure that if a dowel without taper fits through the holes in all the decks, then surely a tapered non-placeholder dowel will fit with just enough wiggle room to assure that it is exactly vertical cross wise and has the desired rake aft. Just to be sure I could align the mast vertically, I spent some time with a small level and a small T-square lining everything up when I first dry fit, then glued, the orlop deck in place. In the process I discovered that part of the middle rib frame is cut slightly out of shape. As laser cut, each one has a brace across the top that will be later removed. Unlike the other two, the brace that is part of the middle rib frame is not exactly horizontal. That could have led to an unhappy result if I had used that brace as my reference to place the mast vertically.

Like most others I imagine, I have never had to install gravel on a build before, so adding the ship’s ballast was a new experience. Following the instructions I used painters tape to block off both ends of the hold. I went one step further and put wax paper on the tape to make it easier to pull away from the gravel when finished . . . in retrospect probably not necessary. The instructions say to take a “small amount” of the gravel, soak it in diluted white school glue, then pour it into the hold. I used about 1/3rd glue and 2/3rds water, soaked about a quarter of the gravel in it for a moment or two, and used a plastic spoon to dish up portions of the gravel, being careful to drain off the excess glue. I then poured the gravel where needed around the keelson and mast step, using a plastic spatula to rearrange and level (somewhat) the gravel. I set everything aside to work on something else, then about five minutes later noticed that there was a pool of diluted glue gathering below each end of the building stand, on my self-healing mat! Fortunately I mopped it up before it made a permanent mess of the mat, and I moved everything to a large piece of wax paper. The assembly continued to ooze sloppy glue for another 30 minutes or so but eventually stopped. I let things dry overnight, then pulled off the tape and everything held in place. Just to add a bit of security, I painted a coat of clear matte polyurethane over all the gravel. An hour later I turned the whole thing upside down, and all but three or four tiny rocks stayed put! I put “small amount” in quotes above since reading the instructions, I realized that they said nothing about following up with more small amounts. I decided the initial amount was all I needed, but in retrospect I might have tapered the gravel pile toward the stern (as instructed) a bit less. Not a big deal though since so little of the hold is visible when the barrels and orlop deck are in place. I set up a barrel factory some time ago -- the work being somewhat tedious, I wanted to break it into smaller segments. I drilled pieces of wire into one end of each barrel so I had something to hold on to, gave them a coat of matte polyurethane (to avoid ink bleeding), and blackened the iron rings with a felt pen. Installing them was a little more difficult than I expected, in part because the gravel bed isn’t as level as it should be, and in part because I put a dab of gap-filling CA glue on the barrel, and found as I tried to put in place I either dropped it, or it immediately rolled out of place, spreading glue everywhere. When I put the dab of glue in the rocks instead, and held the barrel in place for several seconds, things went a lot better. The frames and spacers create a bit of a challenge sometimes -- I often find myself thinking it's like trying to work on something through the bars of a bird cage. 😊 Jumping ahead a bit I have installed the deck and sidewalls for the orlop deck, and worked a bit on mast alignment, but I don't have time at the moment to add any narration. I have added the photos below (bow and stern views) to show how little of the hold detail is really visible once the orlop deck is installed. As I have thought about it, I seriously doubt the barrels on the real ship are neatly arranged in rows every other rib. More realistically, but unnecessary in the model, the entire hold should probably be full of barrels. Orlop deck and sidewalls, and mast alignment, will be in my next installment, which won’t be for several weeks, as other interests and activities will pull me away from the shipyard for a while.

A couple of postscripts . . . First, I mentioned that I felt the kit-supplied anchor was too large. I found a smaller one supplied by Amati, and it satisfies my sense of scale better than the other one. Second, I’m on to my next build and log, found at Model Shipways cross section of the USS Constitution.

The most challenging step to date was installing what the instructions refer to as the hold walls (hold floor might be a better description, but they do run from the keel to the ceiling above). The are laser cut pieces, with laser etched details (individual planks and trenails). As the instructions warn, they are cut a little large and must be trimmed to fit. The challenge comes in part from the compound bending that must occur to fit -- they obviously curve upward running from the keel to the intersection with the deck above, but they also curve upward running from bow to stern. The Catch 22 is that it must be fit in place to know how much to trim and where, and you’ll never be able to fit it in place until you do the trimming. I boldly cut the first plank off along the keel, and found that was maybe a milometer too much at the bow and not quite enough at the stern (a small notch where it meets the deck above took care of the latter problem). The instructions suggest dampening the wood some to make it take the necessary shape a little more easily. There are many theories expressed on these boards about wood bending, but what I have usually found to be the most effective is the school of thought which says it is heat which makes wood more pliable, and that water merely helps spread the heat into the interior of the wood. I have an old modeling iron purchased years ago to apply Monocoat to RC gliders, and I was able to slide it in between the frames, but just barely. Whether it helped is harder to say. In any event a lot of clamping got it all in place and glued down. You'll see where I did some stain testing on the underside of the deck. It all came together pretty well for the portside piece (right side of the picture since you’re looking aft). I was not happy with the way I did the starboard side, since I did not get the deck all the way down against the bottom of the frame and the side of the limber at the stern, something I didn’t notice until the glue had set. Fortunately that gaffe doesn’t show as badly as I feared it would, and by the time I cover it with ballast gravel and barrels, and put the orlop deck in place, not much of the work I’ve done will be visible at all. As mentioned before there is quite a bit of laser etched detail in these pieces, and the instructions suggest using two coats of well-diluted paint so as not to obscure that detail. I did as instructed, and did not apply a primer coat. On application much of the detail disappeared, but within a few moments the wood absorbed the paint and the detail reappeared. Three center-lined posts and diagonal planks provided additional detail, which will probably be largely hidden by the barrels and the deck above. Next installment . . . . ballast and barrels.

Ron, I had a similar thought about not building the full mast, or maybe taking a break to do something different part way through the mast build. That looks like it will be quite a project.

If anyone's interested, I'm 2 or 3 weeks into my build of this kit, and just posted the first installment of my log: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/28310-uss-constitution-cross-section-by-tomculb-model-shipways-1768/ Following along will take some patience; builds go pretty slowly for me.

As far as I know this is the first log on this site for Model Shipways’ cross section of the USS Constitution. I bought the kit last summer, when I think it was pretty newly released, and when I was about midway through my Spray build. I have never done a cross section, and I was attracted to the novelty (for me), the detail, and the fact that I wouldn’t be spending many months simply building a hull. So far I am not in the least disappointed. Upon opening the relatively small densely packed box I soon realized this was not going to be a simple, quick build. There are five sheets of plans (although only two are really plans; the smaller three show the location of the hundreds of laser cut parts as laid out on their sheets of wood as well as some photo-etched brass fittings). The two plan sheets are three feet by almost four feet (that’s a two foot ruler in the photo of them laid out on my floor). I found a couple poster hangers on Amazon and hung them on the wall to better view them. The fittings are extensive, as is the number of laser cut wood parts. The only thing that seems underwhelming in volume is the number of wood strips and dowels, but that kind of makes sense for a cross section. The really amazing thing for me are the instructions. Almost 100 pages, with an average of 3 or more color photos per page! As with most Model Shipways kits, the instructions can be downloaded as a pdf from their website, which makes choosing an appropriate build a lot easier. With instructions this voluminous, it is helpful to have them on a computer and able to be searched, if there is a specific issue you want to look ahead about (as I mention below). First step is to cut out the three frames, or what I might have called ribs, which are the skeleton of this part of the hull. The laser cut pieces are securely attached with a minimum of tabs, and the laser cutting is sharp, precise and complete -- well done. All three parts are attached to a building stand, that will be cut off later in the build. Two lengthwise pieces connect those stand parts, and the slots all need to be sanded so they fit. I made those connections quite tight, as they will not be disassembled for quite some time. Eight additional crosswise laser cut pieces (identified as spacers) are provided to connect the frames and to keep them a precise distance apart at the level of each deck. These will be moved around a bit from time to time during the build, and I sanded their slots so they are a little looser. The instructions assign six of them to what seems like a random distribution among the orlop, gun and spar decks (there is also a berthing deck, which for some reason gets none of these spacers). Interestingly, I haven’t found anywhere in the instructions or the plans where the deck names are expressly identified, but it is pretty easy to figure out by looking ahead at the pictures in the instructions (orlop, berthing, gun and spar, from bilge to sunshine). Assembling and gluing the keel (which needs a rabbet cut in it), the keelson pieces, and the keelson cap is all quite straightforward. The instructions suggest, and the pictures show, writing “B” on the bow end of the keel to assure that it is properly installed. That struck me as a bit odd, until I realized that the three frames vary fairly significantly in shape and that things are not symmetrical for and aft. No big deal as to the keel, but a good habit to get into when dealing with other pieces later in the build. The slot in the frames for the keel is a loose fit, and I used a couple of rubber bands to press the keel up against the frame when gluing it in place (careful to glue it to the frame and not to the building stand). A mast step is then made out of a 1½” length piece of the remaining ¼” x ½” strip. To avoid chewing up the soft basswood with a large bit, I drilled the ¼” hole for the mast by starting with a ⅛” bit and working my way up to ¼” with the three or four intermediate bits I own. I then chamfered the hole with a Dremel tool. Note that I did not cut the mast step off of the ¼” x ½” strip until I had finished all of this -- it’s nice to have something to hang on to when working on a piece like this. Limbers (I had to look up the nautical definition) on either side of the keelson cap are shaped from ¼” square strips. Here the change in shape of the hull fore and aft makes shaping them a little like shaping a propeller. The instructions complicate that quite a bit by having the limbers slope up to the base of the mast foot where the two intersect, but the plans show the mast foot simply continuing straight down on each side to intersect with the limbers. In one of the photos below I tried to draw in red what the instructions direct. I chose to follow the plans instead, and added a 1/16” strip to the bottom of each side of the mast step to fill the gap between it and the limber below.

I just realized I forgot to add a few "finished" photos I took. Thanks for the kind words Moab and Rich. Rich, I have always felt that it is worth the effort to actually plank a deck rather than use some facsimile of a planked deck. And good to know there is another cyclist on board. Tom

Pardon a little off topic personal chatter, but last week was a celebratory one for me. My wife and I got Covid shots, our daughter celebrated her 30th birthday, I got out on my first early morning group bike ride of the year, and . . . Sunday I finished my Spray build!! This has been a very fun build, made more so by the comments and input left by those of you who were kind enough to chime in. And I really liked the BlueJacket kit, even though I chose to do things a little bit differently every now and then. I don’t think it’s an appropriate kit for beginners -- mostly due to difficult hull planking and skimpy instructions -- but it should be a fun build for anyone with some experience and an interest in its history. So coming around the bend for the final stretch . . . I was somewhat apprehensive about the mahogany hand railing, with its compound bends and spindly stanchions, but all went very well. I glued pins into the stanchions, and that made them rigid and strong enough to accept the rail on top without faltering. The plans show the stanchions getting slightly taller as you move forward, and I cut them accordingly, with some light sanding once installed to make the curve of the rail look good. Once installed, I put a coat of satin varnish on the mahogany. For the mizzen shrouds, I put eyebolts through the hand rail, the tie brace and into the brace bracket (terms used in the plans) to anchor the lower ends, and eyebolts installed previously at the top of the mast for the upper ends. The main mast shrouds were quite a bit more work, what with lashing one end to a dead eye, threading them through spreaders previously cut and painted and through eyebolts at the top of the mast, lashing the other end to a deadeye, and then lashing those deadeyes to the deadeyes secured to the hull. Fortunately all of it went well and was pretty straightforward. I painted the anchor dark gray, and assuming its stock to be wood, painted that flat brown. I darkened the supplied brass anchor chain, then ran it from the anchor over the rail, through the hole in the topsides, aft a bit to the winch, then forward to the hawse hole which presumably drops into a chain locker. I did not lash the anchor in place as I may replace it some day with one that's a little smaller; at 1½” long it looks too big to me. Given the model’s scale, that would be a 4 foot long anchor on the real boat (stock would be the same length), and that seems like an awful lot for a solo sailor to pull up over the side. I had similar issues with the cord supplied for the hawser. Other than being white, it looked quite good, but was too large. A little over 1/16” in diameter, that would translate to over 2” in diameter in real life, which strikes me as overkill on a 35 foot boat. The only cord I could find of a size that seemed appropriate to me was some white string, which I tried dying in coffee. I wasn’t able to get it as dark as I wanted, but its overall appearance wasn’t wasn’t all that bad so I’ll probably leave it as is. Finally I added some rope coils -- halyards on the pin rail, an extra one there because you can never have too much line on a sailboat, the jib sheets and the main sheet. I used a piece of heavy wire, weighted down with a miniclamp, to get the to take the shapes I wanted, then used several drops of diluted white glue to get them to hold their shape and stay in place. And that does it. It took Slocum a few days short of three years to circumnavigate the globe on his historic voyage (or three years and three months, depending upon what port you designate his place of departure). By contrast, the first to finish the Vondee Globe race the end of January did it non-stop in 80 days! I was somewhere in between -- a year and four months to complete my build. It was a great journey, and I got to sleep in a warm bed each night! 😀 ⛵ 🛌 💤

Hi Josh, I didn't use any of the kit-supplied threads/ropes because they were white and needed to be dyed. I have saved leftovers from every kit I have built, and was able to do the lines from that supply, although I'm not entirely happy with what I used for the hawser. More on that in my next installment, coming up within the hour. Tom

Thank you all for your responses . . . very helpful.

I'm at a point where the only rope I have available for the running rigging need at hand is very white. I tried soaking it in coffee for about an hour, but that didn't darken it very much. What methods and dyes have people successfully used to get the color they want? Also, now that Chuck Pasoro is no longer manufacture his great looking rope, what other sources have people found for quality rope? My next build is from Model Shipways and I'm not impressed with what is supplied in the kit, especially the running rigging. Thanks for your thoughts.

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. 😑