Doug McKenzie

2 sides of the mainmast have been tapered with a small band saw (Pic 1). [BTW the sanded, varnished deck is also seen in this pic. The magic marker method for caulking is clear enuff but certainly doesn't reproduce the actual appearance in the photo in the previous post.] After sanding the sawn sides, the other two sides are marked for taper and sawn and sanded. When the tapered, square cross section is complete, the lines for making the mast 8 sided are drawn (Pic 2). The octagonal shape that will result can be seen on the heel. Pic 3 shows the 8 sided mast that derives from removing the corners of the 4 sided mast. The upper part of the mast is still 4 sided because I'm exhibiting RS1 Colin Archer at an Arts & Crafts fair and I want to show the process for making the mast. The lower part of Pic 3, shows the 8 sided part, you can see the 'ring' around the mast where the lines are visible on the original 4 sides but the 4 new sides are blank. The 8 roughly equal spacings shows that the cross section is octagonal. Pic 4 shows the section below the octagonal part which has been reduced to 16 sides. Another ring is shown with lines on the original 8 sided mast and spaces on the new 8 sides. Again, we're looking for these to be equal. The part below the deck has been rounded. Eventually, of course, the entire mast will be rounded. Pic 5 shows the mast stepped (temporarily) into the painted hull!

There is something very satisfying about laying the deck planking. Both edges of the planks are colored black with a magic marker to simulate the caulking (Pic 1). It is unclear if that will be enuff, after sanding, to well represent the real thing (Pic 2 from colinarcher.no) - probably not but... The kit provided 3.5" wide planks which is quite close to the real width in Pic 2. I assumed the distance between deck beams was 36" and that they would use planks between 8' and 25' long. The 'deck insert' interfered with normal butt placement but being able to remove the insert was way more important than butt spacing! With these constraints, three planks sit between butts on the same 'deck beam' (Pic 3).

I was a little ahead of myself when I said the hull was ready for deck planking. I still needed to fit the cockpit and the 'deck insert' (Pic 1). This thing is removable to be able to get to the RC equipment. It has no actual counterpoint on the real vessel so I have given it the name 'deck insert'. It looks so simple but it took hours of sanding to fit snuggly into the deck opening. Now we are really ready for the deck planking. The cockpit stands proud of the deck so the planking will butt up against it. The deck insert is flush with the deck and the planking runs over it. The planking will be cut around the deck insert so that it can still be removed. On to a different topic - making the spars. I have made all my spars for at least 30 years from 4 pieces of spruce (from Lumberyard for Model Shipwrights). These are glued up to ensure straightness and no twisting (Pic 2). I don't think many do this and there is probably no really good reason for doing it but it makes me feel good. The four pieces of lumber can be seen here. This is the only thing for which I use Elmer's wood glue (rather than CA) primarily because a lot of glue is used and I want the extra time to make sure the components are flush. The next step involves laying out the taper on one surface (Pic 3). It will be cut with a small bandsaw. A note of possible interest regarding the tapering of spars on this Norwegian vessel compared to British vessels (with which I am much more familiar) - The British spars are a little more tapered. The diameter at the hounds divided by the diameter at the deck for Colin Archer is 83% and for a mast on a British vessel that ratio would have been about 75%. Visually, the spars on Colin Archer are a little fuller than I am accustomed to. I was concerned with the authenticity of the taper given in the kit's plans (they seemed too full). So Jeppe Juul Nielsen made some measurements on his RS 14 Stavenger (one of Colin Archer's other Rescue Ships). I'm using his measurements which are a little slimmer than the kit's. The adjacent spar is the bowsprit.

The interior is now epoxied, the subdeck has been reglued in place and the mahogany stained covering boards have been glued on around the edge of the deck. She's ready for the deck planking! It's not much progress but I'm going away for a long weekend and figured I'd get uptodate.

I've finally gotten to the fiberglass. I've been putting it off because its been 10 years since I fiberglassed the 22' Little Leon and I just kept reading articles until I finally felt comfortable moving ahead. The first pic shows the planking sanded roughly to show where filler was needed. The figure is a scale super hero that will be turned into a seaman. You can see light between planks (bright light inside the hull) where my carpenter skills are shown off brilliantly. The hull is ready for fairing/filling. First I used auto filler (2 part, green) and I was not successful. Too stiff and I had to mix such small batches because it set up so quickly. Then I tried a Plastic Wood product in a tube and it wasn't creamy enuff. A different PW product in a little plastic box was perfect. The second pic shows sanded filler with a coat of epoxy resin applied. The green auto filler is clear. I applied the first coat of resin without fiberglass because the planking material seemed porous and I wanted to make sure that it didn't absorb the resin from the cloth and weaken the bond with the wood. The third pic shows the fiberglass applied. The resin coat on the fiber glass is quite thick because I used a brush to apply the resin and to work out entrapped air. I would have used a little squeegee (which also would have removed excess resin) but for the hollow curve between the the keel and the break of the bilge. On Little Leon, I had trouble with the concave curves because the squeegee action kept pulling the fiberglass away from the wood. The thick layer caused some drips but I just cut and sanded them off. I'm planning to thin the resin with 5% laquear thinner for the final 1 or 2 coats to avoid drips. I may only need 1 since there is very little exposed weave because of the thick layer of resin.

Ian, Great info, thanks. I didn't even notice that the 785HB spec sheet gave info at two voltages (4.8 and 6.0). I'm guessing when I get the Williams book he will explain what the multiple voltages are all about. By the way I'm using 2oz fiberglass cloth. She has a total of 777 sqin of sail but it is broken up into 3 sails for control purpose. Mainsail/topsail is 374 sqin, the staysail is 139 sqin and the jib is 202 sq in. The remaining 62 sqin is the mizzen and that just flops around I guess. I think force will vary linearly with area so 374/800 x 20 = 9.4 lbs which means using the 6.0v specs should plenty. I hope my logic is correct. Its probably conservative since the mainsail is only 278 sqin and the topsail is 96 sqin but it I'll but it acts like less as it dumps more wind than the mainsail itself. As far as Little Leon goes she's actually a brigantine since she only has 2 masts. Each of the yards has its own braces but the port braces are all led into a single line as are the port braces. These single lines are looped together. This puts the braces on a sort of loop with no ends to get tangled. There are no halyards. The sheets and clewlines are separate for each yard but for one yard they are also looped. The jib sheets are also looped port to starboard as well as the staysail sheets. The end result is that only the main sheet is a line with an end. Thanks again, Doug

Thanks R, I've ordered the book from Amazon and printed the "sail winches which type" article for reading! Thanks again, Doug

Ian, Please understand that I know NOTHING about RC and I've never sailed an RC sailboat or any other RC thing except maybe a car. I'm a pretty good sailor though. I'm attaching a photo of a boat I built, Leon, that, like RS1 Colin Archer, was designed and built by Colin Archer!) I'm learning about RC from where ever and whoever I can. The first thing I learned is that winch servos are somewhat rare as they are either mostly or only used in large sailboats. I looked at HiTec and they have a winch servo, HS-785HB, that precisely matches the dimensions of the 3 sail winches in diagrams for RS1 Colin Archer that they provide even though they provide no support for RC application! Since you mentioned 20lbs pull, I calc'd 7.5lbs for this servo from specs that 'standing torque' is 122 oz.in (what is standing torque?). The radius of the winch is 1" so that gives 7.6 lbs pull. Am I understanding the specs correctly? If I remember correctly this is about $60. Another winch servo that surfaced was from Tower - they said "Our SPMSS7110 is designed to be a winch for crawlers." Ian, do you know what a crawler is? They had several 'lifting torque' figures ranging from 130 to 180 oz (they seemed to assume the 'in' part of the unit) at different voltages. Also if I remember correctly this was about $140. This one seems to be about 2/3 the size of the first one. Ian, any and all comments that you make will be tremendously appreciated! Thanks Doug

Definitely R. Partly for waterproofing and partly for strength as the planking material is quite thin [2mm (5/64")] for the 11cm (4.3") spacing of the bulkheads. Then on the inside I'll be using Epoxy resin for waterproofing. My wife wants me to leave some of the planking visible (i.e. unpainted) which would be the underwater portion - I haven't decided yet (it'll depend on appearance when sailing). Just one mini strake left before sanding and fiberglassing. I ran out of planking material with the little space remaining. In fact, the very last plank was created by scarfing two little pieces together. My local hardware store had 1 piece of 1/16" bass wood (3" wide and 24" long) which I'll use to fill that space. I'll use a piece about 1/4" wide and then sand it down flush with the subdeck.

About 5 strakes on each side still need to be applied. This post focuses on how to waterproof the inside of the hull. I finally decided to remove the deck so that I can brush on epoxy resin. Then I can reattach the deck. A Dremel Saw-Max, borrowed from my friend Marty, was perfect for the job. I made the cut 3/4" in from the edge of the deck (photo left). Removing the deck was not too difficult because the wood to wood contact between the top of the bulkheads and the deck was poor so the glue joint gave pretty easily (photo right). When I finish planking I will fiber glass the outside and then brush the inside and the bottom of the deck and then reassemble.

I was going to wait until the planking was finished but I'm going slower than expected what with a trip to Eastern Europe and completing a model of the clipper Thermopylea for a friend. So I figured I'd make a posting now that she is 2/3rds planked to show some more details of Underhill's method. With the red mark showing where the battens were, the proportional dividers are used to pick off the distance from the top of the last plank to the next red mark. We have set the dividers to 3 to 2 because the bulkhead with the largest distance to the next red mark is 15mm and the width of each plank is 10mm (1st picture). The other end of the dividers is used to mark the plank width (2nd picture). The divider marks are connected by a pencil line and a knife used to reduce the strip to the proper width for the plank. The plank on the other side is marked to match the first one, cut and sanded to be exactly the same as the first one (3rd picture). In the right side of the photo the 2nd plank has been sanded to be the same width as the original plank but on the left side, the 2nd plank has only been rough cut and still needs to be sanded down. In the 4th picture the plank is glued and clamped. The silver model shipway's plank clamps fasten the plank to the bulkheads. The black spring clamps (and the little red one too) hold the plank against the tabs that were glued to the previous plank. Lastly the blue mini bar clamps hold the new plank in line with the previous plank. Fortunately, when the glue dries the plank stays aligned with the original plank. The last photo shows the tabs for all the completed planks. Not pretty, but they work.

Mr Sundt, I am building Billings' Colin Archer RS1 in wood for RC. I have never done RC for anything. Can you tell me what RC components you used since Billings says where to put them but not what they are and I have no idea how to size them. The articles I've seen seem to assume that I know something about RC (which I don't). Thanks for any help Doug McKenzie PS I built a scratch model of Leon which is now in the museum at Tollerodden Foundation in Larvik. That might be near you I have no idea since I'm from New Jersey, USA.

8 of 27 strakes are now in place. The only reason I include this photo is because I forgot to mention that the garboard strake on this hull is not like on big ships. The reverse curvature, midship, on this yacht hull means the garboard strake has very little twist and very little width variation. At the 8th strake, however, the midship bulkheads flare out toward the full beam and the bow and stern remain vertical. This means the 8th strake has a lot of twist and more variation in width than the previous planks. A curiosity for me as I've never planked a yacht hull before as I've said.

After putting on the garboard strake and 2 strakes above it, it seemed like a good time for a posting because there were two unexpected challenges that emerged which I wanted to describe. First, though, the expected results, i.e. at the stern. All three strakes were handled using Underhill's method of first determining how many strakes would fall in the space between the keel and the lowest batten (that has now been replaced by red marks on the edges of the bulkheads). 4.2 strakes will fit nicely because the widest spaces (midship) between the keel and the lowest batten are 4.2 cm and the planks are all taken from 1 cm wide stock. As the stern is approached, the spaces generally get slightly smaller and the width of the planks are reduced proportionately. This is expected. Now we move to the bow. The keel is not straight as it is on large ships, rather it curves upwards from a little forward of midship and keeps curving up till it intersects the deck line. This effects the Underhill method in a big way because as soon as that upcurve begins, the distance between the keel and the 1st batten becomes less useful. If we took that distance literally we would be tapering all the planks so sharply that it would look ridiculous. I introduced the idea of a pseudo-keel that results from extrapolating the distances of the keel from the 1st batten from all of the after bulkheads up to but not including the first bulkhead where the keel starts to seriously curve up. Then I used Underhill's method between the pseudo-keel and the 1st batten to determine the width of a pseudo-plank. This normal looking plank was then laid in place extending forward of the upward curving real keel. The pseudo-plank was then cut to lie against the real upcurving keel, resulting in the real plank. This produces a plank that comes to a sharp point (probably unrealistic) but I couldn't figure anyway around it. It's not like I was going to create a 'jogged margin keel'. As you may have guessed by now, I have no idea how a hull shape like this was actually planked - none of the pictures from the Emma replica showed this. If anyone knows, I'd love to learn. So that was the first unexpected situation. The second arose because the planking material is pretty thin (2 mm / 5/64") relative to the spacing of the bulkheads (11 cm / 4.3"). This meant that adjacent planks did not meet flush along their edges. I considered trying to glue the edges together but with the extra glue and the additional need to clamp the adjacent planks to keep them flush would have been really messy. Instead I used short pieces of the planking material between the bulkheads (seen in both pictures above). First, I glued and clamped them to an already installed plank. Then I glued the new plank to them and clamped them while gluing and clamping the new plank to all the bulkheads. This should keep the final sanding, when the planking is done, to a reasonable level minimizing the number of very thin hull spots. Next I'll just keep planking hoping that any additional unexpected situations yield to simple solutions!

I think I'm nearly done with the planking battens. It was more work than I expected and one interesting result is that I don't believe that I will need any stealer planks in the stern. Not sure about this but we'll see - It's never happened before to me - it's probably due to the lack of any transom . I did a few things differently from Underhill. One is that I put battens on both sides from the very beginning - it just seems to make judging the curves a little easier. I also used balsa wood strips while he used sycamore - he was smart, I less so. The balsa strips broke too often when I adjusted the batten positions over and over again. In any event I'll leave the boat a day or so and decide if I need to make any more adjustments. I'm pleased that I was able to follow the photos of the Emma replica reasonably well. I'll know for sure when the planking is done. The bow view is below, followed by the stern view and the side view. I believe Underhill planked with the battens in place, I don't do this. I mark the edge of the bulkheads where the battens cross them with a red ballpoint line to distinguish it from all the pencil lines that have been marked during the adjustments of the battens. Then I can remove the brads and the battens so that they are not in the way. That won't make a very interesting photo so the next posting will have a few strakes in place. The kit supplies 6" stock for the planks. From the photos I estimate that the replica uses 7-8" lumber. Close enuff for engineering work. The strips are about 35" long and the length on deck is about 36". I'm going to be using probably 3 or 4 planks per strake so they will be around 11' to 15' full scale - a bit long but short enough to avoid having to use much set to follow the batten pattern.

I was going to wait until I was completely satisfied with the batten positions before I made another post but, after the first set of adjustments, the difference was so striking that I figured that anyone not familiar with Underhill's method might be interested in seeing the progression as the battens are adjusted. The photos below show the results of the first adjustment. The adjusted battens at the bow are shown here: And at the stern: I probably should explain why I am going to all this trouble since this will be a working RC model, fiberglassed and painted and the planking won't be visible. The answer is that I love planking a hull with Underhill's method and this particular vessel has a unusual hull form for me. I have never worked with a double ender before and the 'S' shaped bulkheads in the midbody is new to me. The 'S' shape is, of course, common in sailing yachts but I've never built a model of one of those. Also the sheer curve is much less pronounced than what I am familiar with. And the photos of the construction of the replica, Emma, that I mentioned before, show 2 features of interest: 1-- The run of the strakes is unusually straight (i.e. horizontal), to my eye, which is partially due to the light sheer curve and 2-- The uniformity of plank width at the bow and stern (i.e. the small amount of taper) is new to me. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to display these photos of the replica here. Nonetheless, I am trying to reflect these unusual features when adjusting the battens. The beam shot below attempts to show the movement of the battens towards producing the straight , horizontal strakes and the relatively uniform width of, particularly, the topside strakes. Clearly, more adjustment is needed. I don't know when I'll make the next posting - I guess it depends on how large the adjustments that I make are.

Thanks very much Chris

Chuck, a fellow suggested that I add 'Radio' to my Colin Archer title. I can't figure out how to edit the title. Is there a way? I did add 'Radio Control' as a keyword but changing the title does seem like a good idea. Doug

Ian, great idea. I guess I just have to edit my log title - I'll see if I can!

The first pass at the batten positions has been made. The midship bulkhead was divided into 6 roughly equal sections using 5 battens. On one side of the ship, all 5 battens where laid into position by gently pressing the battens against the bulkheads without worrying about the relationship between the battens. In other words, it was attempted to not put any set to the battens. Later we'll use set to make everything look good. At this point we are just getting a sense of how the hull is shaped. So in this first photo of the bow it is clear that the top side planks will need to be considerably wider than the battens indicate and similarly the underwater planks will need to be narrower. The same is true for the stern seen in the picture below. I used 1/16" x 3/16" battens so that the fasteners (5/8" brads and the plank clamp screws) would not split the battens. The bulkhead were 3/16" thick. The two pictures below show the battens from off the bow and off the stern. The batten closest to the keel can be seen clearly in these views while being almost invisible int the bow and stern photos. In the next posting I will move the battens to achieve two objectives: 1-- To make the run of the planks much more attractive and 2-- To try to match some photos of a 2013 replica of another one of Colin Archer's rescue ships, RS 22.

The beveling of the bulkheads for the planking is complete. I don't why exactly, but this task is my very least favorite of all the tasks on a model boat. Sanding a solid hull and thinning the bulwarks of a solid hull is worse for me but I haven't done that for 62 years, so I don't think of it often. In any event, I'm done as shown below. I try to leave a little bit of the laser burn on the midship side of the bulkhead edges to make sure that I don't change the shape of the bulkhead. The furthermost and aftmost bulkheads have a lot more burn left as a result of trying to make sure the bevels on those bulkheads lead to the stem and stern post doublers smoothly. In the next posting, I'll begin Underhill's method of ensuring that the run of all the planking is pleasing.

Jeppe Juul Nielsen has written about Colin Archer, the man and his boats. RS1 Colin Archer is included. A PDF is attached that is most interesting. Colin Archer - the designer at Tollerodden 03a.pdf

RS1 Colin Archer, named for her designer / builder, was launched in 1893 in Larvik, Norway. The model, 1:15, is being kit built for Radio Control. The kit is by Billing Boats in Denmark. I wanted to build an RC boat and this one has a special appeal because Colin Archer also designed and built Leon, a 302 ton brigantine in 1880. I scratch built a model of Leon at 1:48. She now sits in a museum in Larvik dedicated to Colin Archer. Her build is described in forum "Build logs for subjects built 1851 - 1900". RS1 Colin Archer, after 40 years of very successful rescue operations saving many Norwegian fishermen, is now owned by the Norwegian Maritime Museum in Oslo. She is maintained and sailed at vintage ship gatherings in Northern Europe by the Colin Archer Cutter Club. The kit models her after the rescue years as she did not have an auxiliary engine until after she 'retired'. This picture is from the box top of the kit. On the way to being ready for planking, the hull is 37" long. Sparred she will be 50" long (62.5'), 54" high (67.5') with a 13" beam (16.25').

Chris, It's possible that I was a little too quick - the $14 didn't actually buy me a kit, rather an original page out of Model Airways News magazine from 1956 advertising the availability of the kit. Fortunately, the drawing of the boat in the ad showed detail not visible on the box cover painting so it had actual value. Mean while refurbishment proceeds and it's more challenging than I expected.

Chris, Thanks a bunch. I can buy an original kit for $14 from eBay which I' m doing because maybe the instructions will give more info like the builder - who knows? In any event thanks again Doug