wefalck

The pedigree of the Canadian/US American fishing dory is quite obscure. However, there were many flat-bottomed boats with more or less straight sides all around the European coasts. They are simple to build, with a minimum amount of skills and tools. The type probably came with French settlers to N-America, as around the British Isles keel-built boats dominate. It was then, presumably, that the Franco-Canadians sort of standardised the design and construction. The French and Portuguese Grand Banks fishermen adopted the type for its obvious advantages in this type of fisheries. It is quite well-adapted to long-line fishing, where its initial low stability does not matter so much, but the stability increases, when the boat is loaded with fish. The flaring sides also make for a good loading capacity. This design is less useful for net-fishing as practiced around most of the European coast, due to its said low initial stability. The standardised design and absence of structural traverse timbers makes ths dory most suitable for stacking, hence space saving transportation. The big three-masted topsail schooners sailed from French and Portuguese harbours with huge stacks of dories to the Grand Banks. They also carried spare boats as 'flat-packs' IKEA-style, that could easily be assembled at the fishing grounds. Fecamp at the coast of the Canal and Paimpol in Brittany were the big French Grand Banks fishing ports and had their own dory industry I believe.

That gives a very American look to the coach ...

Should be easy for any one with a lathe and who is located on your side of the pond to turn up a sleeve ...

0.6 mm in your set, but PROXXON and watchmaking supply houses sell them down to 0.5 mm in 0.1 mm increments. It's the same shaft diametre as the common burrs.

Got a similar one for Christmas from my beloved and well-meaning, but not so well-informed in these matters wife a few years ago. If yours really goes down to the indicated rpms, it is much more useful than mine, which has rpms in the thousands. It was really meant for engraving glass, rather than drilling. For this reason it is also designed to only take bits with 2.35 mm shaft. The smallest drill diametre with this shaft seems to be 0.5 mm.

John, I have posted your query including the first photograph in our German forum: https://forum.arbeitskreis-historischer-schiffbau.de/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2660. There we have a number of knowledgeable people on these fourmasted barques. There is one guy who worked on the restauration of the PEKING after her return to Hamburg from the New York Southstreet Seaport Museum and another guys works on a large-scale model of the PETSCHILI. I have looked for potentially useful photographs of the PASSAT and the PEKING in order to see, whether they have the same fairleads on the central bridge, but couldn't find any close-up picture (yet). Let's see, whether there is a response on the German forum ...

I tend to shy away from tools sold in model shops, but rather go for the quality tools sold to watchmakers. They may be the same tools, but of higher quality, albeit at a somewhat higher price. However, one has to pay attention, because even watchmaker's supply houses, particularly the on-line ones, today often sell Chinese scrap. I tend to buy secondhand semi-antique tools ... Below is a selection of my antique and modern tool-/workholding and drilling tools: 1 - Archimedes drill for watchmakers. 2 - Slender modern pin-vice with hollow fluted brass body. 3 - Slender antique pin-vice with hollow fluted brass body. 4 - Shop-made pin-vice with walnut body and head made from an insert drill-chuck; these drill-chucks are unfit for their intended purpose as they usually do not run true. 5 - Eclipse toolmaker's pin-vice with knurled steel body; these come in different sizes. 6 - French-style pin-vice; these are closed with the sliding ring and have usually brass inserts in the two jaws that can be adapted to special needs; 7 - Dito, here the jaws are replaced in hard-wood for delicate parts. 8 - Antique laboratory pin-vice with fluted wooden handle. 9 - Modern pin-vice with fluted wooden handle; these come in different sizes and capacities. 10 - Antique toolmaker's pin-vice for very delicate work in confined spaces and for holding tiny files and broaches. The Archimedes drill of No.1 closes from 1 mm down to near zero and holds even my 0.1 mm drills. They make also a variety with spring-return that can be worked with one hand (though I wouldn't do that with such tiny drills). Before the days when I had all those tools, I slipped a section of cored solder wire over the drill. The run-out may too big for an electric drill, but it works very well for hand-drilling.

Not that I particularly like this 'after-though' solution, but I have seen often in museums brass wire-struts midships on both sides that are meant to keep the model from falling over. My personal approach would be to epoxy two nuts (say M3 or M4 for Europeans) above the keel, drill an appropriate hole through the keel (which may need to be doubled-up at this point). The pedestals need to be hollow to run threaded rods through them that screws into the nuts. There needs to be a space drilled out in the baseboard to accomodate a nut and a washer. The latter serve to tighten down the model onto the pedestals. This arrangement can also be used to temporarily hold the model onto a building stand/jig for further work after the planking is finished. This solution has the advantage over wood-screws that the model can be screwed down/unscrewed any number of times without losing grab.

These were actually merchant navy 'cadets', not naval ones. At that time the thought was that future merchant steamer officers still should get 'proper' training on a sailing ship. Fairleads are there to keep a rope in place, rather than to change severely its direction, for which blocks should be used. I am not too familiar with the deck layout of these ships, but it may be that the cadets were kept occupied with hand-work, while normally at that time winches were used. So you may need a lot of cadets pulling on ropes and you may need to deploy them at various places due to the limited deck spaces. Thus you may need to lead the rope in question from one place to another. Just a wild guess.

Your workbench reminded me of this display of the Grand Banks fisheries museum in Fecamp/France: I like your systematic approach and the tilting building jig 👍🏻

Yep, that fish-trap looks good 👍🏻 For what kind of fish is used here? Over here in Europe, I think it is used mainly for eels and crab/crayfish/lobster.

Some people use oil-paints for washings, but I personally prefer acrylics or sometime simple water-colours. Acrylics have the advantage that different layers dry rapidly and are not affected by subsequent washes, while in the case of water-colours in particular it is not possible to have several layers. You can have several layers of oil-washings, but you have to work fast and there may be quite long drying times in between. For acrylic washings I use a dish with a bit of water in the middle and dabs of (pre-diluted for the airbrush, such as Vallejo ModelAir) paint. I wet a soft brush, dab the tip into the paint and then make a very dilute mix that is then applied to the model. Then I quickly empty the brush on a paper towel and wet it again to push the paint where I want it. If there is too much, it can be picked up again with a very wet brush. I apply were little, let dry, examine the result, and if needed have another go half an hour so later. Repeat if needed. Typically, I have black, dark grey, white and burnt umbra on the palette, but it depends also on the subject. Dark green may be added, to represent algae, or rusty red for exactly the same effect. The other option are pastels. I am lucky to have inherited from my father a large set of artists pastels (they tend do be quite pricey), but mainly use again the same colours as above. I think this is about all you need for ship models. They sell sets of 'weathering powders' for military and railway modellers, but most of the colours you probably wont need. Pastel sticks are available individually from artists supply shops. I rub a bit of pastel on a 240 or so grit sandpaper and take the resulting dust up with an old brush. Some people use bristle brushes, but I use old hair brushes as they are easier on the underlying paint. With the brush the dust can be applied to the desired areas and rubbed in. It doesn't work on glossy paint, matt paint is the best. However, it is nearly impossible to remove it dry, you will have to wash it off. Otherwise there will remain a light haze, but this may be exactly what you want. Excess powder can be simply blown off. Pastels have to be the very last step, as adding washes afterwards would either wash the pastels away or turn them into some sort of paint. I like the pastels because they have a sort of 'velvety' effect and surface that cannot be achieved with washes.

It's less the craftmanship aspect than the curse of working on a model of a prototype that is reasonably well documented. There are always things one doesn't get quite right and usually one spots those only on the photographs of the finished object ...

Thank you very much again, gentlemen, for your kind comments! Keith, I am not sure that photos in the 1870s would have been more grainy and less focused. At that time photographers still had to use large-format glass-plate negatives, even wet collodium plates. Given their size of nearly A4, they and the care taken when focusing on the ground glass-plate before inserting the actual photographic plate, they images tend to be extremely well focused and also with a great depth of field. We tend to see such pictures in printed form in books etc., where much of the original image quality is lost. For the fun of it I superimposed the very first photograph of S.M.S. WESPE, an engraving that obviously was based on this photograph, and a somewhat ‘photoshopped’ shot of the model (without spending to much time on that):: … perhaps I shouldn’t have done this, as I no discover things that could have been done better 🫣

Just to chime in: I love to see such subjects modelled that are humble, yet indispensible to the operation of the harbours and other facilties on which the ships depend that we usually chose as subjects. I also love these 'technical' subjects of the steam-age, I mean the real things, not the steam-punk caricatures. Looking forward to the completion of the project.

A few glamour-shots of S.M.S. WESPE Finally, I managed to go into town to buy a suitable paper as backdrop for the glamour-shots of the whole model. Here they are without further comments: And also two shots in black & white:

I gather in some cultures they make 'sewn' baskets from coiled-up braided strands of whatever fibres are available. Each layer of the coil is sewn to the one below. Otherwise, I can offer a high-tech solution that might be adapted to the availability of tools: For the Botter-model I needed a couple of fish-baskets and I decided to weave real baskets, well almost. For this I needed a tool that would give the basket its shape and allow me to handle it while weaving. So I turned the little implement below from a piece of 5 mm diameter aluminium and drilled a 2 mm hole all the way through it. It will allow me make two baskets simultaneously. The material for weaving is another issue. I would have like to use wire, but it would have been difficult to actually weave with wire. So I used some thin cotton thread for the stakes and fly-tying yarn for the weave. First the ‚stakes’ were put into place by winding the thread around the form tool in a continuous series of loops, passing the return part through the middle of the center bore of the tool. This then was woven out with the fly-tying yarn using a sewing needle. The rim is a bit of a fake: normally the stakes would be bent back one over each other to produce a stable and decorative finishing. Here I made a double row of half-hitches with the weave, i.e. the fly-tying thread. Once this was finished, the ‚basket’ was soaked in wood stain and then a few dabs of matt varnish were applied to secure the weaving. The stakes with the exception of two on each side then were cut off flush with the rim. The remaining stakes were twisted into looped handles. Finally the stakes were cut around the hole in the bottom of tool. A bottom of the basket was faked by closing the hole with a good drop of white glue. The baskets then were weathered using acrylics paint (umbra). I am sure that this technique can be easily adapted to a larger scale. You were already half-way there ...

That came out pretty neat 👍🏻 Do they drill holes through the stones(?) used as weights, or do they strap them on? For the latter option you could find some small stones and tie a thread around them as if you would tie up a parcel. The loose ends you then can knot into your net. Alternatively, you could try to get hold of some shredded cork. Not sure, whether in your part of the world there are any model-railway shops, but if so, they may sell shredded cork in different size grades. If not, you may need to empty a couple of bottles and shred the cork yourself. The cork-rocks can be easily drilled (if that is the method of attachment) and painted up to resemble rocks.

Impeccable metalwork as usual 👍🏻 However, somehow I don't see the the two chain-wheels, that should have depressions for the chain-links ...

... the same was probably said, when manual lathes and milling machines and powered saws were introduced. The question is: what is our objective - to build better models or to develop manual skills? On the other hand, if you want to show bare metal or wood, there is no 3D-printing option (yet).

In case you are not happy with the way the net turns out, other materials to consider would be ladies' stocking or pantyhoses. You may need to look for 'patterned' ones for larger mesh sizes. They can be staked out on a board to stretch the meshes and then ligthly sprayed with varnish to keep the meshes open, but not so much soaked as to make them too stiff. If your wife doesn't wear a suitable colour, the material can also by dyed. I have used this method for a 'tanned' net, albeit at a much smaller scale (1/90):

Just to mention and without wanting to imply anything, in the past I have simulated such pipe insulation with twisted strands of asbestos wool by winding cotton thread around the wire and soaking it in varnish:

Not sure that the inhabitants would have appreciated this ... wasn't the boat operating in a tropical climate?

Relatively? May be you are still think of thinning the leading edges? What ever the conclusion, it it a nice piece of metal-workmanship 👍🏻 I actually wondered, whether the five-bladed propeller was a more recent addition to the boat? I would think that the original arrangement would have included a three- or four-bladed one?

Aren’t many of such titles now available as free digitalisations?