JacquesCousteau

After returning to Mexico City, I've been able to make more progress. First up, I applied filler to a couple slightly low points where the sheer plank met the subdeck. I then marked out the top of the bulkheads (except toward the bow and stern) so that I can properly set the deck butt shift pattern. I recognize that the bulkheads aren't necessarily accurate to where the deck beams would actually be placed, but the spacing seemed like a good approximation at least. Speaking of the deck, I've been thinking of how to make and color it. The clearest images of the decks of working lanchas come from Carlos Vairo's photos from the early 1980s, several examples of which are below. As can be seen, there's some variation, but a dark brown or gray brown color seems appropriate. Source: https://www.carlosvairo.com/galeria-puerto-montt-lanchas-chilotas In terms of materials, I am running low on my stocks of 1/32‐inch thick basswood (which I cannot seem to find available in Mexico), so I was thinking of using coffee stir sticks, of which I've accumulated quite a few in widths of 3/16- and 1/8-inches, which seem to be roughly appropriate in scale based on Vairo's photos (and could well represent the variable deck planking widths that have been pointed out earlier). From what I can tell, these are made of birch, which is a fairly common modeling wood. That said, I had a couple concerns. First, how to best go about getting the right color? Second, I'll still need to make the covering boards out of basswood, so would there be too much of a contrast with the birch deck? I made a few test deck patches to check, seen below. The one at left has a basswood plank on the left side and was stained with a Minwax cherry stain pen, then given washes in dark brown and black acrylic. The second from the left also includes a basswood plank on the left side and was stained with Sayer Arce stain (which, unlike the Minwax, is readily available here) before also receiving brown and black washes. Third from left is just basswood and also was stained with Sayer Arce, but had a different quantity and proportion of brown and black washes applied. The rightmost one (just birch) was stained with a mix of Sayer Arce and a gray stain, before having the same washes applied. Overall, I don't think the difference between the basswood and the birch is overly noticeable if I go with basswood covering boards and a birch deck. The birch grain is a little more visible, though, which I'm not crazy about but which I don't think is bad per se. As far as the coloration, while I do like the cherry, I have my doubts as to whether a single stain pen would be enough, and I think the arce looks good as well. I am currently thinking of using the mixed gray and brown stains and then applying washes a bit unevenly in order to represent the wear patterns seen in Vairo's photos. Let me know if you have any thoughts! I also trimmed the sternpost and keel to their proper length and angle. I further marked out where the bottom of the sternpost should join the keel timber. Next I plan on filling the current joint between the two, sanding smooth, and carving a false joint (which ideally will be barely visible under the paint. Finally, I'm nearly done with planking. The gap is narrow enough now that clamping is becoming a challenge.

Nice job dealing with the challenges you're facing. The Spanish Windlass idea is something I'll have to try myself. Out of curiosity, how far apart are the bulkheads? They look quite widely spaced, which seems to me like it may make planking (not to mention attaching the subdeck) more difficult.

Nice work, it looks great!

Congratulations, well done!

Nice work, and very well done on the dory as well!

Thanks, all, for the kind comments! I suspected as much during the Half Hull build, but I think planking may be my favorite part of modeling. Glad to hear that people are enjoying the history behind this vessel type, too. We'll see if I can add more as the build progresses, I enjoy research and feel it's important to understand not just how a boat was built, but how and why it came to be. Gary, I think "charming" is a good word for it. For such a beamy, full-bodied, and rather squat vessel, the hull still has a bit of grace to it, I think. A couple more strakes have been added. Now I'll be packing up the hull for travel back home, and I'll be finishing planking there.

Nice work, very well done! If you haven't already looked, you might want to check out existing build logs--I know there are some for the Bounty Launch and the Sloup, at least. They might give you an idea of particular challenges of each.

Looking forward to following this build! Depending on how you'd like to make it, there are a lot of options to personalize this as a fishing boat or as a yacht. Either way, I've had some luck in finding old photos of Friendship Sloops via the Penobscot Maritime Museum's digital collections, although the search function is a bit unwieldy. See here, for instance, for photos tagged as Friendship Sloops: https://penobscotmarinemuseum.historyit.com/search-interfaces/search/digital-collection/0/1/1/1?rq[0]=8639&ip=1

Fantastic job, definitely something to be proud of!

Thanks, @wefalck, @Keith Black, and @palmerit for your comments, and to many others for the likes! I've made further progress on the planking, completing the lower band and having just one strake left in the upper band. At this point, I decided that I wil try for semi-irregular plank widths in the central band, so as to better match the photos I've seen of actual lanchas. As noted earlier, many seem to have had slightly slimmer planks around the bilge. To represent this, I took the remaining space--the central band plus the last strake of the upper band--and marked it out for six planks instead of five, reducing the average width relative to the other bands. I considered trying to mark out different widths within this new, expanded central band, but realized this would be tricky as I would need to set up matching irregular proportions across all bulkheads. Instead, I marked the new strake locations evenly, but I will fiddle with the plank widths by making some strakes just under the markings and others just over them.

Congratulations on a job very well done! This is a really exceptional build, fantastic craftsmanship and a great eye for detail. The photos of the whole model really showcase how well everything comes together. Sometimes I find myself favoring more of a weathered look, but this model does a great job at showing how a clean build can highlight the elegance of even a relatively simple workboat. It was a true pleasure to follow along as you built this. Any ideas of what you're building next?

Excellent work, the planking looks great!

Welcome! The Provencale seems to be a good starter kit, and doing a build log would be very useful for getting advice. If you haven't already seen it, HakeZou's build log does a good job of showing how it comes together, as well as signaling some challenges. https://modelshipworld.com/topic/24350-la-provençale-by-hakezou-finished-artesania-latina-120-scale/#comment-716193

By now, the planking is about one-third of the way complete. I've added three out of four strakes in the lower band and one out of four in the upper. So far, the planking is coming along all right. With the rather beamy and full shape of the hull, the planks in the lower band have all been very curved and the foreward planks have all had a pronounced twist, which has posed a challenge to getting a good fit. That said, the hull will be painted, which--compared with the NRG Half-Hull--gives me a little more flexibility with any minor issues, as I can just use filler if there's a tiny gap. I've been following the same planking methods as on the Half-Hull. To briefly recap: First, I use a bit of semi-translucent Tamiya masking tape to mark the shape of the plank. Then, I put it on a sheet of 1/32-inch-thick basswood and cut it out slightly oversize. I then dry fit, noting high points along the joint with the previous plank and sanding them down a little at a time, checking and rechecking until it fits well. Then I adjust the outer edge to fit the marks on the bulkheads until everything fits well, at which point the plank is soaked, clamped to dry in place, and then glued once dry. It's a pretty slow but meditative process that I enjoy, although if you're not careful it can be easy to accidentally oversand and ruin the plank, as I did here. So far I have not made a final decision about whether to add irregular-width planks further along. At the moment, I'm leaning toward no, because I think it will be very hard to see on the completed model, has a high chance of looking wrong, and would add complexity to lining out the strakes. I also have to admit that I think I'm doing a better job at consistent plank width so far on this build than on the Half-Hull, and it feels like a bit of a shame to purposely throw it off. I've also decided that I'll include a slight irregularity in the plank butt shift pattern. From the image of the Marisol shown a few posts ago, it looks to me like there's not necessarily a consistent plank butt shift over the entirety of the hull. I've determined that I can change up a strake in each band--especially because the strakes are longer in the upper band, allowing more possibilities--in order to include a bit of irregularity and suggest that these vessels were planked in somewhat idiosyncratic ways without looking too "off".

Excellent work! The decision to use other woods and leave them with a natural finish really worked out well, it's a striking result and definitely a very unique variation on a frequently-built kit. Looking forward to your next builds!

Looks like you're off to a good start!

Congratulations on an inventive and unique build! The chain base looks great and fits the mood of the piece quite well.

Very precise work, the plexiglass construction method is very visually striking as well. Having never worked with any sort of glass, I'm very curious to see how you fair the hull. I may have missed it elsewhere, but will you be planking it in wood or some other material?

Very nicely done, especially for your first build! Definitely a result to be proud of.

Great job, this really looks exceptional.

Very nicely done! The naval board style looks like a great way to display a model without taking up a ton of space, plus it really lets the hull construction and details shine.

It's coming along very nicely!

Thanks, very good eye! I actually hadn't caught that. Somehow I misinterpreted the slight horizontal line through the stealer as the continuing plank, not sure how I missed that it's actually a stealer. It's definitely an interesting stealer, given that it seems to suddenly double the width of the plank. It looks like the plank above also turns into a steaker, this one with a pointed diagonal joint with the plank running into it.

Thank you for your detailed comments on this. I'm definitely wary of having too much randomness and making it look weird/wrong rather than interesting/accurate. The idea to test it out with card first is a good one. I also agree that a more variable width between planks rather than between bands may end up looking more natural, but it will be tricky to balance this so it doesn't look off. It's also worth noting that some lanchas had relatively even planking, as on the Marisol, below. Any unevenness there is pretty subtle--and somewhat obscured by the paint, as will be the case on my build: Source: https://www.carlosvairo.com/galeria-puerto-montt-lanchas-chilotas So, for now, I've decided to start the lower band of planking with equal-width planks marked out. After I get a couple strakes down, I may revisit whether I want to switch to some variable-width planks instead. After getting the bands finally adjusted, I marked out the plank widths (which may be adjusted a bit later, as mentioned above). I also worked out a 4-plank butt shift pattern. Based on photos like that of the Marisol, above, it seems like having 2-3 planks per strake should be reasonable. I then began work on the first plank, using the same method I used on the NRG Half-Hull--that is, using tape to mark out the shape (the method is described in more detail in that build log). So far I'm finding that the planks are close enough in shape that, after shaping one, I can trace around it to make the plank for the other side, leaving it very slightly wide and carefully sanding for the final shaping. I've added the fore and aft planks of the first strake above the garboard. Despite the pronounced twist, they seem to have turned out all right. There's a slight gap at the aftmost end on the port side, which I couldn't see before due to the clamps, but it's small and a bit of filler can fix it.

Thanks, all! With the garboard squared away, I’ve been working out the planking belts. I actually started on this a bit earlier as a way of figuring out what width I should give the garboard. I don’t really have any information about what sizes of wood were available, but what I could do, in at least a few of the photos that I have, is to count the number of planks on the hull, and from there work out how many planks I wanted to have on this model and what their maximum width would be, from which I was able to choose a slightly wider dimension for the garboard. Interestingly, many lanchas have planking of highly variable width where it intersects the stem. This is maybe clearest in this photo from 1935, which seems to have 14 planks below the sheer strake, some of them much wider than others. Source: https://www.bibliotecanacionaldigital.gob.cl/bnd/629/w3-article-320806.html Similarly, the vessel below (which seems to have 12 planks below the sheer strake) from 1963 also has planks of different widths. Source: https://www.memoriasdelsigloxx.cl/601/w3-article-1805.html I was unsure of how to best handle the uneven plank widths. I would like to make an accurate model, but this seems like something that could be easily overdone and look strange. It also would pose a challenge to lining out the hull. After some consideration, what I’m currently planning is to divide the hull into three equal bands of planking. However, while the upper and lower band will be made of 4 strakes each, the middle band will have 5 strakes. This way, the narrowest planking is around the turn of the bilge, which seems to be more or less what’s going on in the second photo above and which would make the most sense to me if there was any deliberate planning about where to use narrower planks (instead of the builders simply making do with what was available, which likely was at least a part of it). So, the middle band’s strakes will be about 20% narrower than the other strakes, which seems notable to anyone paying attention to the hull without going so far as to make the hull look weird. I’ve therefore begun marking out the bands using chart tape. As on the half-hull build, after getting a good run I’ll be letting it sit overnight to approach it with fresh eyes tomorrow. If anyone has any suggestions about the variable planking width and my plans to deal with it, I’m all ears!