el cid

'Hants & Dorset' rescue launch doing a pick up. w/c 16” 11”

Stage 3 almost finished, just need to trim the dowels.
A clever design I thought but you need to take care to follow the instructions so that you add in the various pieces and glue as set out or you could get in trouble. Also make sure the small parts are round the right way before gluing - nearly messed that up.
Next stage is on to the first section of planking down by the keel.

Slip and Proceed 
 Fairmile Long Range Rescue Launch 
W/C 14” X10”

Jim,
 
That sounds like a very interesting and enjoyable visit.
 
I've never been to Russia but have had a very liquid 'lunch ' with some Russian pilots and engineers at the Farnborough Airshow...they were great guys and had some some amazing stories to tell - nothing sensitive, just Vodka talk.
 
I've found that almost all nationalities get on with each other...it's just respective Governments that muddy the waters.
 
I wonder what fishing boats were historically used in Arkhangelsk? OK, off on another Google search....;-)
 
Regards,
 
Richard
 
Edit: Those cod fishing boats look quite spectacular...https://www.romanovempire.org/media/cod-fish-fishing-boats-port-of-arkhangelsk-archangel-on-white-sea-northern-9ef98b
 
 
 
 

The Skipper somewhere on the Thames late 19th Century 16.5” X 11.75”

My baby girl is here visiting us from New Hampshire.
 

Adding to Eberhard and Dr.PR's comments, this discussion reminds me of something my late boatbuilding mentor, a older fellow who'd been one of the last to have gone through a traditional trade apprenticeship and had run a boatyard of his own for perhaps fifty years, said to me on the subject: "A house framing carpenter cuts to the nearest quarter inch, a finish carpenter cuts to the nearest thirty-second of an inch, and a boat builder cuts to the nearest boat." His point was that it isn't the measurements that matter, but rather the fit of the piece to the ones next to it, so forget about the dimensions on the plans and pay attention to what you are fitting together.
 
Any sort of ship or boat plans, at least until the advent of CAD, are never absolutely accurate. What they are, really, is simply "scaled plans for drawing full scale plans." You can't draw a scale line fine enough, even at 1:48. Back in the day, they'd draw the lines of a 150' ship on a six or seven foot long piece of drafting vellum and the scale lines drawn would still be so wide if blown up to full scale that you couldn't take accurate measurements from the plans. While at modeling scales, the problem isn't as great, how often do we see plans drawn to 1:48, even? The rule in full size engineering is always that measurements are never to be taken from the drawings, but rather must be taken from the notation of the distance on the drawing. In modeling, we can cheat somewhat, but only if we "build to the boat" and not to the plans. What the pre-CAD draftsmen did was to take up a "table of offsets" from the drawings with dividers and read the distances from scales, knowing that no matter how carefully they placed their divider points on the center of the line, the table of offsets would never be perfectly accurate. Indeed, if the offsets for a 150' ship were accurate to within an inch or two, they were quite good. 
 
The purpose of the table of offsets was to enable the loftsman to loft the patterns for the ship full size. The loftsman takes the table of offsets and the lines drawings and uses these to draw the vessel full size on the lofting floor. When doing so, the loftsman uses battens to spring fair curves, using the offsets as a guide, but the offset points are rarely all on the fair curve sprung with the batten. (There are many tricks to the loftsman's trade. In "fairing the lines" from the draftsman's offsets, the loftsman uses the "diagonals" to test the accuracy of the lofting, for example. Further discussion of this is beyond the scope of this post, but for those interested, Lofting, by Alan Vaitses is highly recommended.) The loftsman trusts the batten, not the draftsman's offset measurements to develop the full size patterns for the shape-defining parts of the ship. Only once in a while, when there are a number of identical vessels to be built, will you get lucky and find that a loftsman has generated a corrected table of offsets from the full size lofting that are "tighter than a gnat's ***." In this case, there will usually be a notation on the table of offsets like "Corrected offsets." or "Offsets as lofted." Otherwise, the offsets will have to be "faired" on the loft floor.
 
The loftsman's full size patterns were usually only those essential to get the vessel "in frame." From there, the "wood butchers" "built to the ship," not to the plans. They'd set up a few basic frames, sometimes as few as as a midship frame at the widest beam and a couple forward and aft of that, plus a stem and transom. Then they'd tack battens sprung across the faces of these frames and the resulting "basket" defined the shape of all the frames in between. In such fashion, a fair hull would be constructed. This is sort of the way planked models used to be built, although once in a while, an author would draw up a full set of frames and publish them for modelers to use, as we see in the old modeling books by Davis and his contemporaries.
 
Today, CAD makes it possible, in theory, at least, to generate far more accurate drawings and it seems modelers are seduced by CAD and then find themselves sucked into believing they have to become micro-machinists using extremely accurate (and expensive) machines with DRO, or even CNC, to turn out parts accurate to .0005 if they want to build a good model, even from a kit, but this isn't so. "If it looks right, it is right." was the old time ship builder's maxim and it serves the modeler as well in miniature as it did the old timers working in full size. The old timers didn't have to worry about cutting each side perfectly square and to exact size when making a box. They just cut half of the sides a bit large and when the box was built, they planed the overhangs on the edges to fit, yielding a perfectly jointed cube. I'm not knocking CNC, for it certainly has it's place. (We wouldn't have IKEA knock-down furniture without it!) For building one-off models, though, the old fashioned measuring tools are more than sufficient and often much less expensive, not to mention a joy to own and even collect. Our goal is to create a compelling impression of reality in miniature. That doesn't always mean NASA-level tolerances in our measurements. (Even at that, John Glenn orbited the earth in a rocket ship designed with slide rules!) Sometimes, even slight deviations from exact scaling, such a a smidgen smaller rigging lines, can actually produce a more compelling impression of reality than perfectly sized ones, and that's when modeling becomes an art and not just a craft. So as the man says, "Don't sweat the small stuff."
 

And this is me painting them
 

Hi Lou, thanks for commenting. No I don’t have a Corvette model in the house.( in fact I have 4 RC 1/16th scale Tanks Tiger,Sherman,T90, and T34. RC boats need water. I can run my Tanks in the garden!) I could paint most well known WW2 RN ships from memory, but I do use photos. I like painting 'small' ships, they can get up to all sorts of things. I really don’t like painting 'a ship'. I much prefer painting a story with ships in it. I can’t really explain how I paint, I just do it. I’m 80 next year so I’ve been 'at it' since I was about 5!. The first pic I can remember was a Tractor with hills behind it on a blackboard when I started school. Don’t suppose this helps but at least it’s a bit of background.
jim
ps White Tail Sea Eagle 
 


 
 

Todays painting Corvette HMCS Cobalt passes SS Empire Captain. w/c 16.5 X 10.75

HMS EAGLE on a hot windless day in the Tropics.Buccaneers parked in Fly 1&4, Sea Vixen about to touch down , with another on Finals and the good old Gannet plodding 'Down Wind', no doubt looking forward to something long and cool in the Wardroom
w/c 16.5”X10.75

Weight on wheels switches are fairly common. Helps keep landing gear down, primarily for takeoffs. Some fighter guys liked to flip the gear switch  up as they started rolling and you could get the gear up faster. Of course, if you had a problem at rotation and wanted to stay on the runway (assuming there was enough in front of your to allow stopping) , you could be sraping along on tanks and partial gear.  Hard to stand up to the Boss and explain that.

Fletcher Class Destroyer USS Nicholson with Oiler 
W/C 16,5” X19.75”
Jim

I couldn't have done it as I suffer from vertigo  when high up, I can't even look down from a high building, I was up the top ramparts of a castle the once and nearly got stuck as I froze from looking down over the edge.
Nope can't do hights.
 
OC.

I flew with pilots who would not stand near the edge of a high building. Didn't want to look down. Had no issues flying. Go figure.

Corvette HMCS Atholl colours may not be right, going by a couple of b&w photos. She looks hard worked with paintwork well faded. w/c 16.5” X 11.75”    

Two Fairmile 'D' class MTBs returning from a cross channel sortie w/c 13.5” X 11.75”

HMCS Comox (J64) (Fundy-class).  Commissioned on 23 Nov 1938, HMCS Comox was stationed at Esquimalt at the outbreak of the war, and carried out local patrol duties until Mar 1940, when, with HMCS Nootka, she was ordered to the east coast.  Arriving at Halifax in Apr 1940, she spent the entire war on local minesweeping duties with Halifax Local Defence Force.  On 15 Jan 1945, with HMCS Fundy, she rescued survivors from the US liberty ship Martin van Buren, torpedoed off Halifax.  She was paid off 27 Jul 1945.  Sold for commercial use in 1946 she was converted to a tug and re-named the Sung Ming.

Cutty Sark W/c 16.5" X 11.5"

“Nee Naw, Nee Naw” 'Hants and Dorset' Air Sea Rescue launch on a 'shout', passes a couple of A/s Trawlers. w/c 16” X 11”

Two MTBs in bound. Three Minesweeping Trawlers out bound w/c 16” X 11”

HMNZS Gambia and some elements of the BPF 
w/c16"  11"

In the Shipping lanes 
W/C 16” X 11”

Norwegian Barque 'Hippen' with Dhow. w/c 16” X11”

Chasse Maree,Cutter and Schooner off the French coast w/c 16” X 11”