Jim Lad

A warm welcome to MSW from 'Down Under'. John

Still coming along nicely, Popeye. I like the idea of the steel ladder! John

Beautiful work, Frank. I agree with Bob that those railings on the replica are more a result of modern OH&S rather than historical research. I really doubt that the original ship had them. John

Magnificent work, Greg! John

A really beautiful model, Pete! John

That looks a very neat little craft - and a very nice model. John

Just catching up with what you're doing, Steve. Your tug is really coming along and looking first class. John

A very nice piece of metal working, Keith. John

Thanks for the overall views of the model, Nils - she certainly looks first class. John

She's looking really first class, Keith - well done! John

A very nicely fitting sail, Russ. John

Just catching up, Maury - she's coming along beautifully. John

Part 2 is postaed as a seperate thread, folks! John

Yet more absolutely beautiful work, Glen John

For planking these boats I use my favourite Privet, as the planks are under 0.5MM in thickness and have to cope with a fair amount of bending. I know that Privet isn’t available commercially; however any hard, very close grained timber that can take the bending will work. I usually plank boats like this with the planks a little over scale width. What we want is a good look for the boats as much as strict scale, so the over-width planks work well in this context. The width of each plank is easily decided by measuring around the girth of the proposed boat and dividing by the number of planks you want. In the case of these boats, I opted for a wider sheer strake so that I could fit a rubbing strake, as you’ll see later. Each plank will need to be shaped to fit and also chamfered along its lower edge and at the ends, if the planks are to fill well. The garboard strake is obviously the first one to fit. Being the first plank on, it won’t need chamfering along its length, but will need the chamfering at the ends. The chamfering of the ends of the planks helps them to fit neatly into the rebate of the stem and stern post and also helps them to bend into the adjoining planks at the ends. Be careful in cutting the planks to length as they need to be a really good fit in the bow and stern rebates. The garboard strake can be made from a straight piece of timber, but it will need some pretty extreme bending at both ends, as can be seen in the photos. I find that the garboard is usually the only strake that needs to be steamed or boiled to allow the extreme bend to be put into it. Also, before fitting each plank, draw an overlap line along it. You can’t see inside the boat to judge the amount of overlap on the planks, so a line drawn on the previous plank will help to position them correctly. Once the plank is bent to shape, put a dab of glue on each frame plus along the edge of the plank and at the extreme ends and hold it carefully in place until the glue sets. I find it helpful to glue only half of each plank on at a time. It takes longer, but it helps to position the planks accurately. Work back and forth on each side of the boat planking both sides evenly. After the garboard strake, each strake will probably need to be cut to a curve to fit easily – you don’t want to force the planks into position. On the boats for the Herzogin Cecilie, I found that the planks needs a curve cut into them of from one to three MM as the planking progressively went up the hull. In the case of these boats, there was no ‘reverse curve’ in the planks at the turn of the bilge, which can usually be expected in clinker boats. Remember to chamfer off the bottom edge of each plank to give a good tight fit against the preceding plank and, naturally, don’t rush – a clinker boat will only look right if the planking is even along the length of the boat on both sides. Don’t worry too much about excess glue getting on the planks – they can easily be cleaned up later with a fine file, so long as you’re using a good, fine grained wood. Here is one of the lifeboats with the planking completed, but showing it ‘warts and all’ before clean-up. And this is what it looks like after just a quick, rough clean. With the boat still on the plug (for rigidity), clean up the planks, keel, stem and stern posts and file them down to their correct thickness. Also at this time fit any outboard features such as a rubbing strake. On these boats, the rubbing strake (not present on the launch) helped to strengthen the bare hull, which is a little fragile. Once the external work on the hull is complete, the boat can be removed from the plug. Simply cut through the frames at the top of the planking; cut through the stem and stern posts just above where their final height above the gunwale will be and then down between the posts and the plug (to free the glue) and the boat should simply pop off its plug. Here is a work boat with the planking completed and ready to come off the plug, with the second one just freed from the plug. You can see the film still in the boat that’s just been freed. This film will just pull out of the boat, except for any spots where glue has leaked through, in which case a clean-up with a sharp blade will soon fix it. Once the boat is off the plug, the internal finish will vary greatly depending on the type of boat. These boats were fitted with floor boards and thwarts together with side benches for the lifeboats. Remember to paint as you go, as some internal parts will be impossible to reach once they’re fitted out. In the case of these boats, I painted the inside of the hull before the floorboards were fitted so that they would be white beneath the flooring. Another trick (not photographed) is to make the thwarts slightly thicker than scale and then chamfer any visible edges to make them appear to be scale thickness. This will give a little more strength to the thwarts, which need to be solid enough to keep the sides of the boat in shape, as double ended boats tend to try and collapse towards the centreline. Another point to make life a little easier is to fit way oversize pieces as the gunwale capping, not worrying about anything but having them cover the top of the gunwale and frames and fit together neatly. Once thy have been glued down they can easily be trimmed back to their correct size – much easier than trying to cut and fit small curved pieces of the correct width in the first place. Finally, with the other three boats having been delivered, here are the launch and the work boats complete and ready for delivery to the model of the barque. I had held back the launch as we’re showing the barque as she was when she was just departing from Port Lincoln, South Australia, on her last voyage in 1936 and the launch will be depicted as having just been stowed on the forward skids and still with the little outboard motor attached. By the way – a note on the grab lines around the lifeboats and work boats. This scale is really too small to show the tiny ringbolts used on the full sized boats for becketing these lines, so what I do is to drill a series of small holes along the side of the boat under the rubbing strake and simply glue bights of the line into them. John

Some time ago I advised that I needed to stop work on my ‘Francis Pritt’ in order to build a set of boats for a 1:96 scale model of the four masted barque ‘Herzogin Cecilie’ that a group of us were re-building for the museum. I was asked at the time whether I could let people know how I built small clinker planked ship’s boats so here, at last, is a bit of a description on how I go about it. Just to whet your appetite, here are all six boats in various stages of completion. The piece of wood across the inside of the boat at bottom right is to stop it from trying to close up before the thwarts are fitted. The first thing is to make a plug to the dimensions of the inside of the boat’s hull, but considerably taller than the boat. The reason for this will become apparent shortly. Any sort of wood will do for this, but a soft wood is easier for carving. You can see from the photo that these plugs have been used before. The rough line of the gunwale has been marked on the plug plus a guide for positioning the frames. Now you need to cut some fine pieces of wood for the frames. Again, the choice is yours, but I’ve found that for most boats at 1:96 some of the very fine scale wood used by model railway enthusiasts works well and is fairly easy to come by in a range of small sizes. In this case the wood came from America and is, I think, birch. Cut sufficient lengths for all the frames plus a few spares, ensuring that each frame in long enough to bend around the plug to a position well above the gunwale of the boat. Steam or boil the frames until they are soft and pliable. I have an old saucepan I use to boil my timber on the kitchen stove. This method works well, especially if you are softening a lot of pieces at the same time. Once pliable, bed the frames over the plug and hold them in place with elastic bands. The frames don’t have to be in their correct positions at this stage – just roughly arranged along the plug so that they come reasonably close to their final shape. I find that it’s a good idea to use at least to rubber bands for the job; otherwise as you put the end of a frame under the band the one next to it is liable to pop out. If you use two bands they can hold alternate frames and make the job easier. In this case I added an extra rubber band when I’d finished all the bending just to make sure the frames were held tightly against the plug. Don’t worry too much if some of the frames crack as you’re bending them – that’s why you cut extra. Now for one of the ‘tricks of the trade’. We’re going to use quite a bit of glue in making these boats and if any of it happens to seep down between the frames and the plug it will be impossible to remove the completed hull from the plug, so – some people wax plugs to stop glue sticking, but a surer way is to use a bit of Glad Wrap; cling wrap; kitchen film; whatever it’s called where you live, but I mean the clingy plastic film used in the kitchen for covering such things as plates of sandwiches or cakes. Cut a small piece of this film slightly longer than the boat and just wide enough to go over the plug down to the line of the gunwale. With the film between the plug and the frames, there’s no way the hull can stick onto the plug! Now we can starting fitting the frames. Place the midships frame over the plug; ensure that it’s square and sitting down hard on the plug and glue the top ends of the frame to the plug above the line of the gunwale, at the same time ensuring that your piece of plastic film hasn’t slipped out of place. You’ll need to clamp the frames in place while the glue sets to ensure that it’s sitting tight against the plug. As I use fast setting epoxy for this sort of work I simply hold each frame in place with my fingers while the glue sets, but if you use CA, you’ll need to devise another method of clamping. Keep working fore and aft with the frames until they are all firmly glued in place. I find that I can hold several frames in place at once while the glue dries. As you reach the bow and stern, fold the extra length of film around the end of the plug and hold the folds in place with the final frames. This will ensure that no glue can leak under the film at the ends. Once all the frames are in place, cut a piece of wood of suitable thickness for the keel, but cut it deeper and longer than needed. Carefully glue the keel piece in place to the frames along the midships line fore and aft. I find that there’s no need to rebate the keel, as the garboard strake will be fixed to it with a good line of glue; however the bow and stern posts will need to be rebated to provide a landing for the plank ends. These rebates should be in a little from the inboard edge of the posts. Again, cut the bow and stern posts wider than required and make them long enough to reach from the feel to the top of the plug. A small groove is cut in these from the keel end up to the height of the gunwale and both posts are then glued to the keel and the top of the plug, ensuring that they are hard up against the plug. In the first of the following photos you can see the pencil marks where I have marked the stem post for the height of the gunwale and the top of the plug. When the ‘backbone’ of the boat is in place and the glue nicely hardened, planking can commence. . This topic will be concluded in Part 2. John

The gauze my mate used was a very finely woven, translucent cloth - I suppose a bit like a bridal veil. It was a scale sail, but not very visible. John

Never tried it, but a mate of mine rigged his whaler with gauze sails so the rigging detail wasn't hidden. I think it looked really good, but it's obviously a matter of personal taste. John

More beautiful work, Greg. John

Beautiful detail work, Adrian. John

Just catching up with your build. She's really coming along very nicely. John

Not definitive, Marc, but I've read that it was stowed on the boat skids, which would be a reasonable place for it. John

Nice to see her with the masts, Russ. John

The detail work looks first class. John

A delight to watch you building this beauty, Greg. John