Elia

Alfons, Nice work on those soldered joints. They look great in the picture, which probably something like 5X scale, so they must look really sharp at full size. Regarding the note on the dories by avsjerome2003: Smuggler was a specialized type of fishing schooner, termed a Mackerel Seiner. The typical mackerel seiner carried one dory and towed a seint boat. Some of the larger of these schooners carried two dories, and in rare cases, two seine boats. The seine boat is double ended, looking very similar to a whale boat, but larger. Instead of dory fishing (for halibut, cod, etc), where 10 to 14 boats were used, the mackerel seiners used their seine boat and dory to deploy a very long net, weighted at its lower edge, cork floats along the upper edge. When a mackerel school as found the seine boat was rowed as quickly as possible around the school until it met up with the dory, thus encircling the school by the seine net. The bottom of the net was laced, and drawn closed, termed 'closing the purses' by the seine boat crew. The net was then moved aside the schooner and the fish were scooped by a dipping net and transfered onto the schooner. Elia

Bob, Neat little build you have going here! I've got to make a few for my schooner (at 1/48 scale) and am glad to see you embarking on this. Elia

I noted previously that I was dissatisfied with my execution of the thin yellow cove on my. I'm attaching a photo of the aft port side of the ship showing that wandering yellow cove. I think many will understand why I need to fix this. The second photo is of the plan I've embarked upon to remove and repair that wood region. I'll add another update to show the progress in the near future. Cheers, Elia

John, That little cutter is sweet. Those are quite a set of spars for it! You mentioned furled sails. Have you settled on a material for the sails? At 1/96 scale I image the material wants to be very fine. Cheers, Elia

Gerty, Michael, Alfons, Thank you all. I appreicate your checking in on my adventure here. Michael, I plan to add a little more deck furniture than most kits have to help illustrate how crowded the decks of these schooners were. The fish pens just forward of the grub (great) beam are part of that. I'll have the two stacks of dories (10 or 12), There will be main and secondary rope hawser coiled piles. I've added the checker board supports on the cabin, the bait gurry, and main hatch, and once I get the opposing supports located on the main and monkey rails, I'll add the checker boards too, along with barrels and tubs of fishing lines. Lots of fun little stuff. Right now I'm mid-process of (trying to) correct my cove boo-boo. Once I see the light at the end of the tunnel I'll post some pictures. Cutting and tearing into a model for a repair is sometimes a little unnerving, but after the first cut it full speed ahead. Cheers, Elia

Bob, Very nice work on the masts, their ironwork, the mast head details like the cross and tressletrees, etc. The color of stained masts looks great for what I imagine slushed, varnished masts would look like. Very nice work. Elia

Dick, I've been using a blue plastic-like masking tape purchased from Tower Hobbies (if I recall correctly) for most of my paint / edge masking. It works pretty well, without much under-seepage. The cove is a unique problem, I think. For those who aren't familiar with the little cove decoration on these fishing schooners it is a small 'gutter' cut next to the edge of the thicker waist plank above the deck and margin plank / waterway. On the real boats the cove was less than 1" wide; if I recall correctly from Chapelle, it was more like 1/2" or 3/8" wide. On the model my cove is less than 1/32" wide, maybe 1/32" at it's widest. The masking tape I had purchased for it was 1/64" wide. From a dimensional perspective the tape should have fit within the cove. But the cove wandered around, and the 1/64" masking tape couldn't bend easily to fit within it. I did try burnishing the tape, within the cove, to seal it's edge and for the most part it worked. I think if the tape were on a smooth, continuous surface it would have prevented much of the bleed through that occured. My current plan is to cut away the edge of the plank in which the cove resides and replace it with an 'uncoved' piece. I'll then just paint the thin yellow stripe on that. I've made a little tool to locate a #11 blade a specific distance off the edge of the plank in question - tonight I'll see if it works. Cheers, Elia

Toni, I've just caught up with your build and log reconstruction. It is great to be able to see your model and its progress from the beginning again. Outstanding work. Elia

Michael, That deck is beautiful. Super nice work there. Elia

Ron, It is great to see your Oneida build again. And through the 'magic' of a log re-build, it occurs quickly, unlike a real build (where we all have to wait for the work to occur). Your hull planking is outstanding, as are the forest of treenails. I just took note of your making the draw tool for the transom trim - I need to incorporate that into how I make my draw tools in single edge razor blades. I had forgotten that you had framed and planked the lower deck, with gratings no less. So very very nice. Cheers, Elia

Alfons, Very nice dory rail and very very nicely done oar. I have to say again that's a great looking dory you've built. The smoothness of the wood finish, along with the paint job, makes for a really attractive little boat. Elia

avsjerome2003, Ron, Tim, Russ, Dick, Many thanks! I am happy with the mixed colors. I used Liquitex soft body acrylics, on the recommendation of Eric Ronnberg. The paint has a lot of very fine pigment, and can be mixed to suit any color desired. I think the only down side of the Liquitex paints are their thickness. Even when thinned appreciably they seem thicker than many 'modeling' acrylics (except for Model Shipways paints, at least the ones I purchased years ago). If the paints have another drawback it is they tend to dry glossy, or semi glossy. That includes thinning them with Medium Matte. I plan to spray the hull with Dullcote once the outside is all finished, with the ship's name, hail, etc., so that will resolve the glossy nature. Ron, yes I did try the outdoor lighting - nice overcast (but somewhat chilly) day. My home deck shows it is in need of a paint job too. The light really helps to show the model clearly. Dick, I look forward to seeing your Helen B Thomas. I'm happy with you 'stealing' pictures. I hope they are of help to you. I look at lots of other models, either finished, or their in-process build photos, so as to get ideas for how to accomplish tasks along the way. I am always trying to learn more about the art and craft of ship modeling (and MSW is an awesome place to learn ). Cheers, Elia

I've spent the past few weeks preparing for, and painting, the rails and hull. For the most part it was turned quite acceptable to me. There is one glaring exception, and I'll focus on that later. Once the Monkey Rails were completed I proceeded to apply a sealer/primer to the rails, perform a light sanding, and then apply two coats of my white mix. The only masking done was to protect previously painted deck and bulwarks. A while ago, when planking the hull, I built an inverted stand for Arethusa, one that located the hull by the two mast holes and a number of contact points on the deck. The stand allowed the inverted hull to located such that the waterline as horizontal, parallel to the surface it was placed upon. This stand, very crude compared to some of the tools and stand folks here build for their models, came in quite useful a number of times. I used the stand to mark the waterline with a pencil, a light line, on the hull. I then applied two coats of the anti-fouling red/brown lower hull paint. I purposefully carried the red paint up above the waterline mark. After painting all of the rails white and the hull red, and allowing a couple of days for full drying, I masked the edges of the rails where the hull black and rail white meet. I also remarked the waterline with my handy dandy stand, and then masked the edge of the black paint at the waterline. I had previously used a draw plate/template to form the very narrow cove along the edge of the waist plank. In full scale the cove is something like 3/8” wide, so one can image how narrow it is for a 1/48 scale model. I was able to carve a fairly narrow cove into the plank, but it wasn’t very even. In the process of scraping it into the plank I felt it wander, almost catching on the wood grain as it went. I’ve looked at this detail for quite some time and had mixed feelings about it. I was proud of having made such a narrow cove, but unhappy that is wasn’t straight and perfectly parallel to the plank edge. Herein lies the problem I encountered. I painted the yellow of the cove, two coats, extending the paint above and below the cove to ensure the cove was fully painted. Once that paint had cured I applied masking tape to the cove. I had found 1/64” wide masking tape from an on-line modeling supplier and purchased it. This stuff is rather amazing in it’s narrowness. When I tried to apply the tape to the cove I found it very difficult to get the tape to nest down into the cove - it wanted to wander about in the cove...reminiscent of when I scraped the cove some time ago. I applied tape edge sealing coats of each of the three paint colors - white along the edge of the rails, red/brown along waterline, and yellow at the cove. This was done to seal the edge of the tape and not allow the over-coat color to bleed under the tape. Once those had dried I was clear to apply the upper hull black paint. Two coats were applied. The white/black edge along the rails worked quite well, as did the red/black edge at the waterline. There were one or two very minor bleed spots, but all in all I think a good success. Now....back to that yellow cove. Once the black paint had dried I peeled back that 1/64” tape...and....not good. The thinness of the yellow was excellent. But, the masked sections wandered along the wandering cove. And there was appreciable black paint bleed beneath the tape. I am very disappointed in this and am stewing over ways to correct it. Following are a few photos of the painted hull, without and with deck furniture. The quarterdeck of these schooners had a unique deck planking run - the planks were set parallel to the cabin, as that was a large cutout in the deck (a strength issue), to provide as much continuous planking strength as possible. Thus, there is some unique nibbing of the outboard planks along the margin plank/waterway. The fish pens and dory skids are shown also. The bait gurry isn't located quite properly, either. Cheers,

Craig, Your Phantom build looks great and is progressing well. The copper plates add 'pop' to the pilot boat hull. Very nice work on that main boom traveler and the other little bits and things. The deck furniture looks good also, and does add visual interest. Very nice work there. Cheers, Elia

Ron, In looking back on your wale construction - do you recall any issues with how the anchor stock wale planks fit together? I see the slight fitment adjustment at the bow. I ask because I've seen other modelers essentially spile each plank and joint in a wale, which struck me as extremely difficult and time consuming. You had cut your wale planks from a single pre-shaped billet. Did the wale plank fitting go easily? Were there lots of adjustments? I wonder about how the swarfing hull loft played into their fit. Your results are very very nice. Elia

Robert, Thank you. I look back on Smuggler fondly. I learned a great deal building it. It isn't on display (yet), residing on one of my shop work benches. When Arethusa is complete I may try to display them together, though I'll need the Admiral's buy-in as they'll take up a nice piece of real estate. Elia

Wouter, I too don't have a Proxxon scroll saw, but do own the DeWalt 788. I hear Proxxons are very nice tools. The DeWalt is an excellent scroll saw - deep throat for longer wood pieces, very low vibration, and adjustable speed. The slower speeds are good for very tight radius work. If those are also attributes of the Proxxon you are looking at then it sounds like a good choice. I find my scroll saw very useful for many small modeling cuts and tasks. Cheers, Elia

Ryland, Excellent work on your AVS. She's a very sharp looking model. Cheers, Elia

Bob, Bluenose looks as great as before! I had forgotten how you cut your chainplate slots into the rails. That tool worked very well. Nice. Elia

Padeen, Thank you! I haven't visited many of the logs yet. I don't think I have been to Danny's Swan build yet - I'll have to pop over and check it out. On my next update I'll give this method of weaving in pictures and text a try. Cheers, Elia

Alfons, That is one sweet dory! Very nice. Elia

Well....that doesn't look too 'integrated'. I tried to copy/paste from an iMac document (I think called 'Notes') into the reply/post box, with interwoven text and photos, then tag the ? boxes to the uploaded images...the software didn't seem to like that. Does anyone have a tip on how to interweave photos and text in a post? I received a warning saying the forum didn't accept the document (I forget if that is the term used) or doc extension...and I was using jpegs. Thanks in advance, Elia

John, So nice! Thanks for adding those back in. Elia

Stephan, It's good to see those prior pictures of your Hesper reappearing. I look forward to more.... Elia

Shipwrights I’ve been puttering along, stealing a minute here and there to do small modeling tasks. I painted the deck the darker gray, per the color previous investigated, fabricated some fish pens and dory skids, to be located athwartship the fore hatch, have worked on the rails, and am now in the process of painting the hull. I used some plans and photos of Arethusa to arrive at the fish pen and dory skid details and geometry. I don’t have any handy photos of these, but will include them in the near future, once I begin adding deck furniture to the model. I started on the rails, or more precisely, near the rails at the transom. The fashion pieces on Arethusa have a peculiar shape to them. I resorted to gluing extra wood pieces on and sanding them to shape. It took me a couple of tries before I found them acceptable. They are small, subtle details and I wanted them to be reasonably representative of those on the real ship. Not exact, but close enough... The main rail is composed of three strips of basswood on each side. I learned of doing this from Charlie Cook, the Blue Jacket Shipcrafter’s on-call modeler (for customers). When building Smuggler years ago I had many questions on modeling and he was quite helpful. The thin strips allow for a nice continuous curve of the rail. One of the nice benefits of using the three strips to build up the main rail is that placement of the chainplate holes through the rail is fairly easy, and they can be aligned with the cant of the chainplates readily without having to resort to drilling through the rail after it was complete. The transom rail (or taftrail), and stem seat, was shaped from a single piece of 1/16” thick basswood sheet. For both the stem and transom rail seats I transferred the uppermost bulwark or transom plank edge onto heavy paper stock, then offset the desired amount to provide a slight overhang of the main rail and seats over the waist planks of the bulwark. I then transferred those templates onto the sheet stock and cut them out. After gluing them to the bulwark stanchions and planks, and then installing the main rail stripwood, I sanded them all flush to each other and in smooth, continuous curves. A single edge razor was ground with a Dremel tool into the profile for the main and monkey rail inboard and outboard edges and used to finish the main rail off. I’ve mentioned this before - I just struggle with this, both the grinding of the profile and getting a good edge on the receiving wood strip. I’m in awe of modelers here, too many to mention, who do this regularly and whose drawn planks look like they’ve been milled by some miniature woodshop. At times mine look like an angry beaver has just used my strip stock as a toothpick. I then moved on to the Monkey Rail and Monkey Board. The Monkey board is the vertical plank or boards (still formed into compound curvature in a plan view)which sits atop the main rail along the quarterdeck. The Monkey Board around the transom was a challenge. Instead of piecing it together with three or more pieces that run along the rail periphery, as was traditionally done in Essex, MA, I made a three layer lamination of 1/16” thick basswood sheet. I did this so that I could then cut and sand it to a profile while retaining some strength of the piece during handling. Once the wood lamination was glued and dry I transferred the outboard transom seat edge to it, the scroll saw cut it to it plan view profile, leaving a little extra all around. I then sanded it to its final shape, checking it constantly to the installed transom seat outer edge. When that looked satisfactory I offset inner monkey board thickness and repeated the scroll sawing, then sanding, and check-check-checking. When the monkey board profile was complete I sanded the lower surface of it to the transom seat, which had a slight curvature to it, fore-aft, by putting sanding paper on the seat surface and gently sanding the monkey board to it. This allowed for a reasonably tight fit, and when glued it didn’t require a great force or preload to get it to bond to the transom seat. The monkey board forward ends were also challenging due to the way the main mast chainplates were installed through the monkey rail and board on Arethusa. On other schooners the chain plates pass through the monkey rail, just outboard of the monkey board, and typically the main rail outer edge is cut away to allow the chain plate to pass it. On Arethusa the chainplates pass through the monkey board, through the main rail, and then exit on the outboard side of the bulwarks. Here is a picture of Arethusa where the sun reflection and angle of the boat in the photo clearly show the main mast chainplates and how they pass through the monkey board and rail. Eric Ronnberg Jr.’s model built for Thomas Hoyne also exhibit this detail, as do other photos of the ship. After a little thought and contemplation on this I decided I would try to install the main mast chainplates in the proper manner for Arethusa. For the monkey board I chose to fabricate it from two strips of wood. The outer one is 1/16” thick, whereas the inner one is 1/32” thick. The 1/32” thick stuff is swiss pear I had purchased from the Hobby Mill years ago. It was perfect for the task - really beautiful wood. I transferred the chainplate holes in the main rail to the 1/16” monkey rail piece and used a square cross section fine file to “cut” the hole depth. By doing this I was able to follow the orientation of each of the chainplates (from the plans I used). I then glued the 1/32” thick piece onto the 1/16” thick piece and voile’ - a monkey board with internal passages for the main mast chainplates. This ended up thicker than scale Monkey Board, but I’m satisfied that the extra thickness isn’t obvious, and it allowed a sound method of creating the slots for the main mast chainplates. I’m sure there are other ways to do this, maybe easier, too. It ‘appears’ to have worked out fine (yeah for small victories). Time will tell...with the rigging of those chainplates and main mast shrouds. Here is a photo of the outer of the Monkey Board planks being glued in place atop the main rail. One can see the thinner, darker Swiss Pear strip on the forward inboard side of the Monkey Board adjacent to the main mast chainplate locations. I had glued those in place, locally, prior to gluing the Monkey board onto the main rail. At the forward end of the main rail I’ve added some buffalo chocks and rail fillers at the location of the anchors - additional wooden fillers which were used to strengthen and protect the buffalo chock and main rail, and the thinner waist planks, from the anchor when raised, lowered, and stowed for passage. I’ve also added small amidship waist plank reinforcements. These were placed along the thinner bulwark planks in the region where the dories were onloaded and offloaded from the schooner. Similarly I added strips just below the main rail just aft of the main mast chainplates...I assume to protect the main rail from damage during hauling fish and equipment up from the dories. Once all of the rails and things were shaped and installed I applied a white sealer/filler, sanded the roughness smooth, and applied the white rail finish paint. As noted earlier I’m now painting the hull - bulwark white is complete, the anti-fouling red/brown is on, the thin yellow cove has been initially painted, and following some masking, the hull black goes on. Then she’ll really resemble a proper Gloucester fishing schooner and I’ll post more photos. [folks - this method of weaving in pictures is new to me...it doesn't look right in the editor/preview...so my fingers are crossed that it looks OK posted]...{I've tried Padeen's suggestion and it appears to have been just the ticket - thank you Padeen} Cheers!