catopower

Hi h2ogoaliekk, First, a name would be nice so I know how to address you. The member name you have is a bit slow to type and to remember. On the model, first on the cause of the problems, I'm guessing that you didn't soak and pre-bend the coaming? That would put extra strain on the deck and would also cause the leaning out of the coaming in the photo and leave you with a gap in the end. To fix, you probably will need to resort to wood filler and sanding. I just use Elmer's myself. The gap in the coaming might be a bit weak with just filler, I would think. So, you might consider gluing a scrap of wood into that opening to give the filler something to stick to. As for finish, for the Midwest kits, probably painting is more appropriate anyway. This is just my 2 cents. Maybe someone else here will reply with some better advice for you. In any case, welcome to MSW! Clare

Hi PPPilot, the CS2 idea would be good if you have an old Mac. I have CS2 running on an old G5 machine running OS 10.5.8. I think CS2 may work on 10.6, but if you have anything more recent than that then CS2 will not run at all. If you have a newer system, you can get the 30 day free trial of Photoshop for the Creative Cloud. That's the current version. It requires, OS 10.7 or later I believe. Of course, there is that Photoshop learning curve, but it's a good product to know. If you need to use it only on occasion, it's subscription based now, so you can just pay for a month when you really need it and be done with it after that. Clare

My take on the reason that, say the Harvey, is more profitable than an historic subject is that: 1. For one thing it doesn't really require much research 2. You can put features on it that are going to appeal to the buyer, even if it isn't historically accurate 3. You can use existing parts on it without having to redesign 4. You can use fancy wood and brass that seems to appeal to a larger % of buyers 5. Accurate subjects are often more complicated to build because the details have to be done "right" 6. You can make up a history that is more interesting and appealing to the masses than many real ships I think you'd probably find many other reasons if you think about it. Plus, one really good reason for not making a truly historical subject: All the people in the know will jump all over any inaccuracies they find in the product. So, if you're going to care about doing an historically accurate subject, you need to spend a lot of time and money doing research, making all the parts accurately, and still people will likely complain. OR, some other research will surface and next thing you know, your "accurate" kit is passé. Tom, regarding your comments about no Baltimore Clippers in 1847 and no enclosed heads, door sizes, etc., look up the Campbell-Class revenue cutters built from 1849. A couple examples are BlueJacket's Jefferson Davis and the old Marine Models Joe Lane kits. It's really not crazy at all. But, I agree that for many of us, particularly those who are invested enough in this hobby to be on a site like MSW, are going to be unhappy about finding out a kit they just bought is fictitious. It used to irk me a lot more than it does today, but still I understand how you feel. Clare

Popeye, thanks for the ideas on the gun ports. 'Tis a puzzlement! Cap'n' Bob, Bill, thanks for the nice comments on the stack. It sure beats the heck out of the first attempt at the stack, which I am too embarrassed to show. Anyway, I destroyed all copies of photos of the original for good measure As it is, I'm really happy with the second attempt. Now, if I can only get other parts of the model to come out as nicely... Clare

The Saginaw had a non-collapsing type of funnel that is quite tall. I think this is a feature that make the ship really stand out to me. Something about that look on a ship with sails I found very appealing to the eye. Luck had it that I the dimensions of the needed tubing was very simple. At 1/2” diameter, I could just pick up the brass tubing from the K&S stand at the local Ace Hardware. And, as it turned out, I could also get tubing 15/16” in diameter there which made a perfect fit inside the 1/2” tubing, making for a sleeve that could help me a little in construction. The funnel tubing was cut 3-5/8” long with a slight angle at the base to accommodate the rake of the funnel. The length was measured for the funnel to sit atop the deck house. I used a length of 15/16” tubing to serve as an inner sleeve that would extend up into the funnel part way and down through the deck house and seat into a shallow hole in the deck. The stack itself is supported by a pair of eye bands, one at the very top and one 15/16” below that. The top band has four eyebolts in it for support guys, the lower one has only three and are offset from the ones above and are centered aft. The diagram shows the two eyebands and the locations of the eyebolts. I went through two funnels trying to attach the eyebands nicely. The first attempt was done by soldering the eyebands into place. However, I did such a poor soldering job that I had to do a lot of filing, which just resulted in a bad looking funnel. On the second attempt, I ended up just using CA glue and that made a very clean attachment. Once in place I drilled out the eyebolt locations and ran the eyebolts into place. By running the eyebolts through the bands and into the funnel, it seems to help further secure the eyebands from pulling out of position. Finally, I sprayed the whole thing with primer and painted using a few coats of Testor’s semi-gloss black acrylic paint. Clare

Mark, by all means please muse. I still have a lot of issues to work out so discussions are extremely helpful. I've never built a model of a ship of this period and certainly not an early steamer. A lot of changes were going on in ship building around this time in history and it's hard to keep track of them. This project has been the most analysis and guesswork I've ever had to put in on a model, so it's a bit taxing at times and slows the whole build. I think I have some things worked out, but then some time later, I start rethinking things. Still, I really enjoy doing the research. I can't remember where I found that image of the Constellation, but it was a major find for me. It certainly helped me decide on the configuration of the stern gun ports. I think you're right about how heavy a single, wide gun port cover would have been – lifting it back into the closed position would have required an enormous effort. It would have made sense to have separate panels. Thanks for keeping me thinking Clare

Hi Mark, I had located this on the Internet at one point, but don't recall exactly where. This is what I was figuring on for the aft pivot gun. I'm still open to configuring the forward gun ports this way, but I'd like to not simply ignore the only known photo of the Saginaw. I think this is what you're referring to though, correct? The small inset photo shows one of the panels open horizontally flat (mostly flat). Not sure what's holding it up – it looks a little more like it's hung-up on something. I might assume this for the Saginaw and then use the panels. The only thing is that the panels on the Saginaw would be short, starting about a foot-and-a-half above the deck on bulkwarks that aren't all that high on this small ship. Clare

Hi Mark, I agree the carriages were double-pinned and it seems pretty clear on the plans I have (the ones I posted here are pretty low-res) that those small circles are pivots as you pointed out. I gathered several reference photos including the one below which I got courtesy of Bill Emerson who wrote a couple great articles for Ships in Scale on his Civil War era gunboat models which are very similar to the Saginaw. This is the USS Mississippi. Clearly, much larger than the Saginaw, but it does show the same double-pinned pivot carriage and also drop down panels for the forward gun ports. The next thing I'm looking at is whether the forward gun port was one large panel that possibly drops down so it's horizontal or if it drops all the way down. In the only photo of the Saginaw, the gun port opening is apparent, but the configuration of the gun port cover/panel(s) is not. As far as I can tell, the insides of panels would have been painted white, like the inside of the bulwarks. If the port covers were panels that dropped down all the way, then there should be a light colored area under the gun port opening. If we're looking at a single panel that hinges down until it's horizontal, then we may be looking at it edge-on, which is what I'm assuming unless I can find some good info to the contrary. From a photo I pulled off of Bluejacket's website some time ago. Bluejacket built this custom model for a client and went with the single hinged panel for the forward gun port. I'm considering going with this configuration, though the actual mechanics of hinging a slightly curved panel is a bit complicated and questionable. As long as I'm studying photos here, I might as well mention the boat gun broadside mounts. There were four 24-pounders at this time. These will look pretty much like those in the following photo pulled from the web. Porter shown aboard the USS Malvern next to the Dahlgren mount. The only issue I'll have is that the gun ports on the Saginaw are pretty low and I'm going to have to use a little creative modeling to make the guns fit. I'll also mention that I'm building the Saginaw with a Hurricane Deck, similar to that shown in the background of this photo. They are not shown on the plans, but I've found anecdotal references to one in George Reed's account of the loss of the Saginaw. Clare

More Hull Work At the time I was planking the deck, I took some time to build up the structure for the main deck house. When the Saginaw was originally built, this included a pilot house at the forward end. For some reason, this was removed at the time of the 1863 refit. Perhaps it wasn’t high enough to be useful. Without the pilot house, the design was pretty simple, just a long rectangle with a half-round forward end. I had shaped the structure from thin plywood and basswood and cut a 1/2” diameter opening for the funnel. The outside was planked with thin, narrow, vertical strips of boxwood. Six doors would be added at a later stage. About the same time, I also made a basic funnel from 1/2” brass tubing, about 3-1/2” long and cut a shallow hole in the deck to seat it in. I also drilled holes in the deck for the masts and cut to length the dowels I would need for the masts and spars. Something I forgot to mention in my last post relates to those last two photos of that post. You’ll note that I added the channels at the same time as the main rail. Since the channels are in line with the rail, I went ahead and built them into the rail itself for added strength. An upper rail or hammock rail will go on top of this, so the channels should be quite sturdy. I’ll post one of the photos again here to illustrate. At this stage, I also added scuppers, which were drilled through the bulwarks and then lined with thin walled brass tubing. I also added started work on the two large bits at the foremast. The plans show them to have what I assume to be iron rods run through them as cross-bitts. These bits might have actually been iron sheathed, but I chose to treat mine as wooden with a metal band that the rods are run through. The next photo shows the upper rail nearly complete. At the bow, notches were cut for the catheads and the rail is still in progress. Gunports were lined and I had started working on the hawse pipes which I made from brass tubing. A small piece of sheet brass was soldered onto the end of the tube and then was filed to shape for the lips. I did something similar for the inboard end of the hawse pipes, though they are completely separate pieces. Clare

Mark, You may very well be correct about those panels running all the way around the stern. One of the reasons I didn't was the configuration of the tracks in the plans. It appears that these support the rear wheels when pivoting the gun. Since there are no tracks to support the gun being trained directly astern, I figured that the panels wouldn't have extended all the way around. One of the more confusing aspects of researching a subject is when you hit things like this sketch done by the Saginaw's captain showing life of the castaways on Ocean Island after the ship ran aground. Maybe he just wasn't out to detail the ship as it was just a sketch, but the drawing shows no sign of a gun or tracks, but what looks like one small gunport. Could be one drop down panel open and the gun might have been hastily cast overboard in an effort to save the ship. Or, maybe he was just more focussed on the crew working to salvage what they could and survive. Clare

Wow, I guess I hadn't set my preferences to follow my own topic. I just showed up and found all these great comments. Thank you everyone. It's very motivating to see your great comments. Saginaw has been kind of on the back burner for many months, but I think it's time to push forward again. I'm still getting my build log caught up, so I'll try to put some more effort into that too. But, thanks Michael, Bill, Popeye, Grant, Mark, Druxey, for your nice comments! Okay, more soon... Clare

Chris, Good luck with your HMS Victory build! I'm following your build closely as I have a very old stock version of the same kit. I have other projects I work on and use this as my long-term background project, at least for now it's a background project. I'm curious as to how you're going to handle the transom and the counter. On my kit, somehow there doesn't seem to be enough distance where the arrow indicates. Not sure what to do about that other than sanding down the stern filler block more. Anyway, you have a great start to your build. Clare

Hull Details At this point, port holes were added. I wasn’t originally sure how these were built at this time, but since the detail is a small one, I decided to simply drill 1/8” holes for them and line them with thin-walled brass tubing. This was to make sure they were perfectly round. In actuality, on the wooden hull of the Saginaw, the metal frame would have been fastened to the inboard side of the planking, so on the outside all you would see is a hole with glass behind it. So, when the hull is painted, I’ll be painting the brass sleeves as well, so they won’t stand out too much. At this stage, I hadn’t decided on how to make the glass, but for the time being, all I needed to do was drill out the port holes. In addition to the port holes, I also cut openings for the pivot guns. The forward pivot ports were an easy call as they appear on the plans and the only photo of the Saginaw clearly shows them. However, the aft pivot gun ports was a bit of an issue. The plans give no clear distinction of how the stern gun ports were configured. My best guess was that they were simply drop down panels that allowed the aft pivot gun to fire broadside. One question was whether or not this ship would have had drop down panels all the way around the stern like the double-ended gunboats of the Civil War. My thinking was probably less clear that it is now, but I figured that since she was built for service accoss the Pacific, she might need to have stronger stern bulwarks to resist the waves of following seas. So, I decided to limit the drop down panels to the sides of the ship. The main rail was added next, made from boxwood, but a hammock rail would go on top of this later. Boxwood channels were attached and, finally, I fashioned trail boards, again out of boxwood, and drilled out the hawse pipes. Clare

More Research Researching a subject is really one of my very favorite aspects of ship modeling, or in particular, scratch modeling. It’s all about the quest for the facts, the sense of discovery, the feeling that you’re winding a path that few, if any, others may have taken. In this case, I know others have been on this path before and I’m happy to be tracing another’s footsteps. But the feeling of exploration is still there. When I visited the National Archives and talked to the archivists there or when I visited the Vallejo Museum and talked to the Director there, we talk about Mr. Van Tilburg and his visit. But, the information he was looking for wasn’t necessarily the kinds of details I need as a ship modeler. So, I continued to spend hours digging through what resources I could find. There were still a lot of questions about the Saginaw and a lot of confusion about conflicting information on things like her armament, location of the ship’s wheel, how her gun ports were arranged, the construction of round skylights, the question of a hurricane deck, etc. I’d found Conald Canney’s book The Old Steam Navy, Volume I: Frigates, Sloops, and Gunboats, 1815-1885. This was interesting and had some information about the Saginaw, but it kind of confused matters. In it, Canney lists the following armament: 1 50-pdr Dahlgren rifle 1 32-pdr gun 2 24-pdr rifles The original armament described in the building specifications, which were published in a Nautical Research Journal article by J.R. McCleary were: 1 32-pdr gun 2 24-pdr boat guns In an interview of William Halford published in the Naval Institute Proceedings in 1935, he specifically mention the main armament on the Saginaw was made up of two Parrot rifles. Van Tilburg also mentions this armament in his book. Then, in my research at the regional office of the National Archives in San Bruno, CA, I found an 1869 record of armaments of US Navy Vessels stationed at Mare Island. The Saginaw’s guns are listed as 2 30-pdr parrot rifles 4 24-pdr 1 12-pdr L It’s quite possible that these are all correct, showing the changes to the Saginaw’s armament over her short career. Summing up, then, Saginaw was originally built for the China Station, armed with a single 32-pdr pivot gun, forward, and two 24-pdr boat guns broadside, probably aft of the wheel houses. Upon her refit, which took place during the Civil War, she was up-gunned. Her 32-pdr gun was moved to a new pivot location at the stern and a new, larger, 50-pdr Dahlgren was added at the forward pivot mount. Sometime later, after the war perhaps, her pivot guns were replaced with 30-pdr Parrot Rifles. This effectively simplified the ammunition supply, though there is no evidence that this was the reason for the change. The 12-pdr L likely refers to a light version of the 12-pdr boat gun. Since there is no gun port for it, I am assuming it was probably on a land-based carriage mount for use on shore. This can be seen in some Civil War era photos of other ships, and ship modeler William Emerson did a good job of illustrating this on his model of the Civil War gunboat Water Witch that appeared in Seaways’ Ships in Scale in 2005. Since I have decided to build my model as depicting the Saginaw before her loss in 1870, this last configuration will appear on the model. Clare

Hull Planking The next step in the Saginaw’s construction was to plank the hull. The thing I like about building a solid hull first is that you can spend time getting the shape of the hull as accurate and as perfect as you can, before planking it. When planking, you don’t end up introducing flat spots or bumps since you have the fully supporting hull, you just focus and getting a nice smooth run to the planks. Getting a smooth run of planking is extremely easy when you’re working with a hull like that of the Saginaw. It’s long and narrow and has a nice sharp bow. Planks require only a small amount of shaping. Anyway, the hull is going to be coppered below the water line and as long as the upper hull planking is good, the lower planks can bear the brunt of mistakes since they’ll be covered. As I mentioned last time, for planking material, I used holly, most of which I milled myself from a board I bought from The Lumberyard a while back. I cut into sheets on my large table saw, thickness sanded them on my Micromark thickness sander, then cut strips off the boards on the an old Jarmac table saw. Since the Jarmac is pretty old and has a lot of vibration now, I had to then take the strips and run them through a thicknessing setup I made from an AcraMill (This was all during my pre-Byrnes Machines saw days). This is just to even out the thickness of the planks since some variation is introduced from cutting the old Jarmac saw. Again, before gluing planks on, I would give each a light sanding to round the edges slightly to make them stand well when painted over. Clare Note that the inner bulwarks have been planked and the broadside gun ports have been cut.

Hi All, Thanks for the birthday wishes last week. Much appreciated! June is a very busy month this year due to three Japanese music and dance performances I was involved in. Though I'm not a dancer, my knees definitely felt their age from 4 long evenings of rehearsals and just being on my feet way too much. Good to sit down and do a bit of blogging and ship modeling again! Haven't done much on the Saginaw what with the problems I'm having with my brass etching experiments. But more on that later... Clare

Building up the Bulwarks The bulwarks on the Saginaw will be planked inside and out, so all I needed to do was to create a core to plank over. There are a couple ways this might have been done. It might have been possible to cut a sheet of wood to shape and glue it along the edge of the deck; It might have been possible to install timberheads similar to a real ship. I chose something sort of in between. Starting with 1/4” wide strips of 1/16” thick basswood, I notched recesses into the hull at key points along the edge of the deck. These were cut 1/4” wide and 1/16” deep so that these wood strips would fit flush with the hull. The strips were cut so that they would stick up just about 1/2” above the deck and they were laid in to follow the proper shape of the hull profile. I started with about a half-dozen of these and positioned them at points where they could best support the shape of the bulwarks. Once these were in place, I took a long strip of wood and clipped it to these false timber heads. I could see where the bulwarks shape needed more support and added more of these timber heads there, and continued this process until about 22 of them were in place. That seemed enough to support a nice shape. I then started adding filler pieces 1/16” thick that fit in between the timberheads, not really caring how big the pieces were or how many would be needed. Appearance didn’t matter, just the overall shape. These pieces were not notched into the hull, but just glued in along the edge. Initially, it wasn’t a very pretty sight, but it was functional. After a bit of sanding, I applied the outer bulwarks planking starting from the sheer molding and planking upwards. The planks consisted of 1/16” wide strips, 1/32” thick. I used Holly for all the hull planking. Holly is a bit on the expensive side, but is so easy to work with, is very easy to bend when dampened, and sands very cleanly. When I applied these planks, I lightly sanded the edges to give the planks better definition when painted over. Clare

Planking the Deck Before laying the day down, I planned out the thickness of the bulwarks and how I was going to attach that to the hull. The plan was to notch the hull to add 1/16” thick basswood strips that would effectively act as “timber heads”. Inboard of the this, I’d need 1/32” for the inner bulwarks planking and another 1/32” for the waterways. So, as a guide, I glued a 1/16” square basswood strip along the edge of the hull. Then, I laid down another 1/16” square piece as a temporary spacer. The nibbing strake was then cut and shaped to fit along the inner edge of this spacer and glued into place. Afterwards the spacer was removed. In the meantime, I measured out the smoke stack and lower masts and drilled holes in the deck for their placement. For the smoke stack, in order to make installation simple, I figured on make an inner sleeve that will eventually be glued to the deck. The outer sleeve represents that actual smokestack. This inner sleeve is 15/16” in diameter and the temporary stack you see in some of these photos is actually this temporary sleeve, cut to the full height of the stack. For the deck planking, I used 1/16” wide by 1/32” thick boxwood. I often add or simulate treenails, but at 1/8” scale, I decided not to do it this time. Planks were laid starting along the centerline. To simulate caulking, I simply edged the planks with pencil. The planks were nibbed at the bow and near the stern where appropriate. Coaling Ports There were six ringed circles on the main deck plan of the Saginaw that were unlabeled and it was at this time that I managed to get some help on MSW 1.0 to identify and understand the construction of what appeared to be coaling ports. These rings are 7/32” diameter in the plans and I decided to use a 3/16” diameter brass rod inserted in a 7/32” diameter brass tube. I’d cut some little buttons from the these to represent the port covers. The brass was straight off the shelf from the K & S metals stand at the hardware store. It turned out that these particular sizes were readily available and fit perfectly. The same was true of 1/2” brass tube and 15/32” brass tube that I would use for the smoke stack. 7/32” holes were then drilled into the deck for the six coaling ports. It wasn’t until a little later that I saw a photo of an actual coaling port and noticed the deck work around it. So, I ended up modifying the openings to allow for the deck work. In hindsight, I realize that adding this detail creates a certain inconsistency since I did not do the same for other features where it might have been appropriate. Clare

Thanks John, Bill. John, Hopefully this is one of those shows where there's actually a final episode Bill, You know... I think... it's just one long piece. At 1/8" scale, that's about 18" or 19". I didn't worry about the number of sections because it's going to get covered by copper sheathing anyway. Clare

Interior Details Since the model is only at 1/8” scale, a viewer would see very little of the interior when peeking through the hatches. After all the hatches are only 1/2” wide openings and they’re going to be partially blocked with ladders. So, I decided to keep actual interior details very simple. I would include no furniture, just some deck details, partition walls and a couple doors where appropriate. The crew compartment was the simplest. I just basically built a box. On the floor, I added the hatch for the forward hold and chain locker and also the chain pipes. The aft wall was a little unusual. It separates the crew compartment from the coal bunkers and it has a recessed section in the center that leans away from the compartment at just the right angle to allow for a ladder. I built the aft partition, planked it with vertical strips and painted it and the other walls white. All except for the forward wall, which I painted black since is doesn’t represent an actual wall. I don’t have any good pictures of them, but I made four beam support stanchions. In trying to figure out how to mount these, I found that it worked best to build them into the cover, cutting holes for the stanchions, which I made a little overly long, and then mounted in the holes. With the cover in place, the stanchions stuck out just a little, allowing me to glue them in place, filing off the excess that stuck up. Here’s the most anyone will be able to see of the interior of this compartment. The officer’s wardroom and the captain’s cabin were next. I don’t have much in the way of photos of that – even less than the crew compartment. But, this section was just a little more elaborate. I had to make two walls to divide this section up into the Captain’s cabin aft, the wardroom forward, and the ladder way that separates the two. This section required the creation of a few doors. I made a pair of paneled doors that would be open to the weather and then made two slotted doors for the inside of the wardroom, though by the time the skylights are in place, no one will ever be able to see them. Still, I know they’re there. Also, half of the doors I left slightly ajar so that you could see or think you could that there was something beyond the door. For the Captain’s cabin, I didn’t have very much space and this area is quite small. So, I tried to use a little forced perspective on the aft wall of the cabin to try to make it look a little like it extended back farther than it actually does. I don’t know how well this will work or if it will actually matter since the only way to see in here will be through a small round skylight. Probably, you’ll see nothing more than the color of the walls and floor. In any case, with these interiors done, I went ahead and glued down the covers and was ready to begin planking the deck. But first, I added the keel, stern and stem posts. Not too much to say about these. I’ve gotten into the habit of using beech wood since it’s very hard. I’ve dented too many keels, but haven’t had the problem since – or perhaps I’ve just learned to be more carful. Clare

Hi Bob, Also, if you simply ran out of coal, you were up a creek without a paddle(wheel)! I find that there is a certain beauty in fallibility. A paddle steamer had to face possibility of running out of coal. When the winds were favorable, they could unship the paddles and save fuel and probably travel a lot faster. But, one thing I read a couple months ago that I'd never considered was that as a ship burned it's 100 tons of coal, it would sit higher in the water and the paddles too, making it less efficient over time. I'm researching also the Japanese screw steamer Kanrin Maru and found that she only had enough coal aboard for 6 days of steaming, which effectively made her a sailing ship, but with a small auxiliary engine for steaming in and out of port. But, her lifting mechanism wouldn't pull the screw up out of the water far enough, causing drag and vibration when under sail. Clare

Thanks for the kind words Brian! Clare

Interior Diversion One of the features I’ve always enjoyed adding is having an open hatch or companionway, or being able to see down through a skylight. I often try to just cut open a little area under a hatch to allow a ladder and then I just blacken the interior so you can’t easily see that it’s just a hole. But, if I sit and stare at the model long enough, I start to think about doing more. And, since I have the interior deck details of the Saginaw, I figured I’d add just enough detail to make your mind’s eye imagine there is a whole world of details hidden away. Unfortunately, I don’t usually get these ideas until AFTER the lifts are all glued together. It could be so much easier if I had thought of the idea sooner. But, it is what it is. So, using a chisel and gouges, I cut open two large areas. One of them is the crew space aft of the foremast, and the other is the officers wardroom and captain’s cabin aft of the mainmast. I wasn’t planning on doing anything extremely elaborate – just add enough detail to make the observer curious. Cutting out the areas on a lift model is actually not so bad. The wood tends to cut away more easily along the layers of the lift boundaries, so it’s easy enough to get a flat floor, which helps if the lifts happen to be at the right depths. In this case they were, so that wasn’t so bad. I cut pieces of 1/64” plywood that fit each of these spaces and planked them over with the same planks I was planning to use for the deck, which is 1/16” wide boxwood strips, 1/32” thick. At this scale, I decided to simply edge the planks with pencil. I didn’t worry about plank butts or treenails since this will be mostly hidden. However I did cut hatch outlines as needed and pencil marks were drawn in where interior partition were to be added. After the openings were cut, I made covers of sheet basswood and fit them. Having chiseled out large sections of the old deck, I was actually able to use some of the removed pieces to fashion simple support beams that were already shaped to the deck camber. So, the sheet basswood covers took on the proper camber without much extra effort. It was only necessary to make sure that the covers seated properly and were perfectly flush with the deck. And, finally, I cut all the openings in the covers for the hatches and skylights. I didn’t glue these down at this stage since there was still interior work to do. Clare

Thanks Bill. Now that my rigging work on the San Felipe is basically done, I have time to get back my own projects. It's taken me a while to get rolling again, but now that I'm working on them, it feels really good. Clare