Bob Cleek

I don't think they are "disciples of a single historical grand master" at all. At the time they were writing, the "average Joe" had a much higher level of education and experience in the manual arts. Boys grew up learning how to drive a nail, shape wood with saws, planes, and knives, and how to keep their tools sharp. Paint and adhesives were easily understood. Perhaps most importantly, many who built ship models in the days before Davis and Underhill (which brings us up to the middle of the 20th Century) came from nautical backgrounds in which they learned the nomenclature and became familiar, often on a first hand basis, with the ships that they modeled. To a boatbuilder, there was little new about setting up, framing, or planking in Davis or Underhill's books. That said, Davis and Underhill introduced amateur hobby modelers to structural construction methods which were previously not widely practiced in the amateur modeling community, to wit: the "built up" or "plank on frame" ship model, rather than the solid carved block hull ship model. 
 
The value of these two early authors was in their publishing works that synthesized between two covers the many diverse crafts that must be practiced in the course of building a high-quality ship model. Davis and Underhill, of course, were also pioneers in publishing and thereby making available accurate plans of particular ships drawn for the modeler's use, without which truly accurate models are not possible. 
 
The rather limited ship modeling literature prior to Davisi and Underhill, and for a while thereafter, suggests that the average amateur ship modeler in the twenties, thirties and forties was turning out what to our eyes were some pretty primitive models. Today, eighty to a hundred years later, some of these models have "matured" to where they are beginning to become noticed as valuable folk art. Obviously, there were extremely detailed and accurate "professionally built" ship models long before the 20th Century, but they were built by highly skilled miniaturists of their time, often working in teams, each with their own trade specialty; not hobbyists working singlehandedly, and the recognizable quality of their execution is what has contributed to their conservation and preservation over centuries. The contemporary models from the Age of Sail we see in museums today are only what we have left of the creme de la creme of models built at their time. 
 
Davis and Underhill were writing during a period in which there was a veritable explosion of "how to do it" literature, Following the First World War, Middle Class folks found themselves with greater leisure time. Modern technology eliminated much of the daily drudgery that previously attended simply living. (Imagine! Store-bought butter and sliced bread!) That leisure time, before radio, and particularly television, proliferated, was filled with hobby pursuits and this created a strong market for instructional literature on related subjects. Before the "DIY" era, craftspeople kept their skills close to the vest. They did not share their "trade secrets" because their trade skills were their "rice bowl." That knowledge is what they sold to make a living. When the general public sought limited trade skill information for use in the pursuit of their hobbies, enterprising authors like Davis and Underhill started writing books containing specialized information that otherwise would have taken their readers a tradesman's long apprenticeship to acquire. What Davis and Underhill, and many others on other subjects, were providing in written form were not the secrets of some single "grand master," but rather, in the main, rather basic instruction in a variety of existing trade skills of the time.  Since then, the technology of ship modeling, as with so much else, has complexified exponentially, as would be immediately apparent from comparing the technological sophistication of the modeling discussed in this forum and the modeling technology discussed in Davis and Underhill.

Certainly not! In every era, there were high quality models being turned out by master miniaturists who could produce an accurate model worthy of the term "fine art." I didn't intend the term, "folk art" to be a pejorative at all. (The top price paid for a Grandma Moses painting so far is $1,360,000.00!) "Trench art," for example, is an appreciating category of folk art at the present time and naval trench art is particularly desirable. In the case of trench art, its "folk art" aesthetic value is enhanced greatly by any historical provenance it may have. As we know, these shipboard-built naval curios have been collectable from at least the time of Nelson, the most well-known of which are the Napoleonic prisoner-of-war models most all of which are definitely in the "folk art" category artistically.
 
Other than those meticulously researched and executed models which serve as significant contributions to the historical record and qualify as "fine art" (a classification of model which doesn't get near the respect it deserves in the fine arts marketplace,) I'd consider most all scratch-built ship models to qualify as "folk art" of one sort or another, although spanning a wide range of quality and value. 
 
Not to invite thread drift, but I'll mention in passing that a discussion of what the ship modeling community might be able to accomplish in terms of elevating the general public's appreciation of finely crafted ship models, and thereby the price such models command, might be a worthy endeavor. 
 


 

 

 
 
 
 
 

I don't think they are "disciples of a single historical grand master" at all. At the time they were writing, the "average Joe" had a much higher level of education and experience in the manual arts. Boys grew up learning how to drive a nail, shape wood with saws, planes, and knives, and how to keep their tools sharp. Paint and adhesives were easily understood. Perhaps most importantly, many who built ship models in the days before Davis and Underhill (which brings us up to the middle of the 20th Century) came from nautical backgrounds in which they learned the nomenclature and became familiar, often on a first hand basis, with the ships that they modeled. To a boatbuilder, there was little new about setting up, framing, or planking in Davis or Underhill's books. That said, Davis and Underhill introduced amateur hobby modelers to structural construction methods which were previously not widely practiced in the amateur modeling community, to wit: the "built up" or "plank on frame" ship model, rather than the solid carved block hull ship model. 
 
The value of these two early authors was in their publishing works that synthesized between two covers the many diverse crafts that must be practiced in the course of building a high-quality ship model. Davis and Underhill, of course, were also pioneers in publishing and thereby making available accurate plans of particular ships drawn for the modeler's use, without which truly accurate models are not possible. 
 
The rather limited ship modeling literature prior to Davisi and Underhill, and for a while thereafter, suggests that the average amateur ship modeler in the twenties, thirties and forties was turning out what to our eyes were some pretty primitive models. Today, eighty to a hundred years later, some of these models have "matured" to where they are beginning to become noticed as valuable folk art. Obviously, there were extremely detailed and accurate "professionally built" ship models long before the 20th Century, but they were built by highly skilled miniaturists of their time, often working in teams, each with their own trade specialty; not hobbyists working singlehandedly, and the recognizable quality of their execution is what has contributed to their conservation and preservation over centuries. The contemporary models from the Age of Sail we see in museums today are only what we have left of the creme de la creme of models built at their time. 
 
Davis and Underhill were writing during a period in which there was a veritable explosion of "how to do it" literature, Following the First World War, Middle Class folks found themselves with greater leisure time. Modern technology eliminated much of the daily drudgery that previously attended simply living. (Imagine! Store-bought butter and sliced bread!) That leisure time, before radio, and particularly television, proliferated, was filled with hobby pursuits and this created a strong market for instructional literature on related subjects. Before the "DIY" era, craftspeople kept their skills close to the vest. They did not share their "trade secrets" because their trade skills were their "rice bowl." That knowledge is what they sold to make a living. When the general public sought limited trade skill information for use in the pursuit of their hobbies, enterprising authors like Davis and Underhill started writing books containing specialized information that otherwise would have taken their readers a tradesman's long apprenticeship to acquire. What Davis and Underhill, and many others on other subjects, were providing in written form were not the secrets of some single "grand master," but rather, in the main, rather basic instruction in a variety of existing trade skills of the time.  Since then, the technology of ship modeling, as with so much else, has complexified exponentially, as would be immediately apparent from comparing the technological sophistication of the modeling discussed in this forum and the modeling technology discussed in Davis and Underhill.

Certainly not! In every era, there were high quality models being turned out by master miniaturists who could produce an accurate model worthy of the term "fine art." I didn't intend the term, "folk art" to be a pejorative at all. (The top price paid for a Grandma Moses painting so far is $1,360,000.00!) "Trench art," for example, is an appreciating category of folk art at the present time and naval trench art is particularly desirable. In the case of trench art, its "folk art" aesthetic value is enhanced greatly by any historical provenance it may have. As we know, these shipboard-built naval curios have been collectable from at least the time of Nelson, the most well-known of which are the Napoleonic prisoner-of-war models most all of which are definitely in the "folk art" category artistically.
 
Other than those meticulously researched and executed models which serve as significant contributions to the historical record and qualify as "fine art" (a classification of model which doesn't get near the respect it deserves in the fine arts marketplace,) I'd consider most all scratch-built ship models to qualify as "folk art" of one sort or another, although spanning a wide range of quality and value. 
 
Not to invite thread drift, but I'll mention in passing that a discussion of what the ship modeling community might be able to accomplish in terms of elevating the general public's appreciation of finely crafted ship models, and thereby the price such models command, might be a worthy endeavor. 
 


 

 

 
 
 
 
 

I don't think they are "disciples of a single historical grand master" at all. At the time they were writing, the "average Joe" had a much higher level of education and experience in the manual arts. Boys grew up learning how to drive a nail, shape wood with saws, planes, and knives, and how to keep their tools sharp. Paint and adhesives were easily understood. Perhaps most importantly, many who built ship models in the days before Davis and Underhill (which brings us up to the middle of the 20th Century) came from nautical backgrounds in which they learned the nomenclature and became familiar, often on a first hand basis, with the ships that they modeled. To a boatbuilder, there was little new about setting up, framing, or planking in Davis or Underhill's books. That said, Davis and Underhill introduced amateur hobby modelers to structural construction methods which were previously not widely practiced in the amateur modeling community, to wit: the "built up" or "plank on frame" ship model, rather than the solid carved block hull ship model. 
 
The value of these two early authors was in their publishing works that synthesized between two covers the many diverse crafts that must be practiced in the course of building a high-quality ship model. Davis and Underhill, of course, were also pioneers in publishing and thereby making available accurate plans of particular ships drawn for the modeler's use, without which truly accurate models are not possible. 
 
The rather limited ship modeling literature prior to Davisi and Underhill, and for a while thereafter, suggests that the average amateur ship modeler in the twenties, thirties and forties was turning out what to our eyes were some pretty primitive models. Today, eighty to a hundred years later, some of these models have "matured" to where they are beginning to become noticed as valuable folk art. Obviously, there were extremely detailed and accurate "professionally built" ship models long before the 20th Century, but they were built by highly skilled miniaturists of their time, often working in teams, each with their own trade specialty; not hobbyists working singlehandedly, and the recognizable quality of their execution is what has contributed to their conservation and preservation over centuries. The contemporary models from the Age of Sail we see in museums today are only what we have left of the creme de la creme of models built at their time. 
 
Davis and Underhill were writing during a period in which there was a veritable explosion of "how to do it" literature, Following the First World War, Middle Class folks found themselves with greater leisure time. Modern technology eliminated much of the daily drudgery that previously attended simply living. (Imagine! Store-bought butter and sliced bread!) That leisure time, before radio, and particularly television, proliferated, was filled with hobby pursuits and this created a strong market for instructional literature on related subjects. Before the "DIY" era, craftspeople kept their skills close to the vest. They did not share their "trade secrets" because their trade skills were their "rice bowl." That knowledge is what they sold to make a living. When the general public sought limited trade skill information for use in the pursuit of their hobbies, enterprising authors like Davis and Underhill started writing books containing specialized information that otherwise would have taken their readers a tradesman's long apprenticeship to acquire. What Davis and Underhill, and many others on other subjects, were providing in written form were not the secrets of some single "grand master," but rather, in the main, rather basic instruction in a variety of existing trade skills of the time.  Since then, the technology of ship modeling, as with so much else, has complexified exponentially, as would be immediately apparent from comparing the technological sophistication of the modeling discussed in this forum and the modeling technology discussed in Davis and Underhill.

Certainly not! In every era, there were high quality models being turned out by master miniaturists who could produce an accurate model worthy of the term "fine art." I didn't intend the term, "folk art" to be a pejorative at all. (The top price paid for a Grandma Moses painting so far is $1,360,000.00!) "Trench art," for example, is an appreciating category of folk art at the present time and naval trench art is particularly desirable. In the case of trench art, its "folk art" aesthetic value is enhanced greatly by any historical provenance it may have. As we know, these shipboard-built naval curios have been collectable from at least the time of Nelson, the most well-known of which are the Napoleonic prisoner-of-war models most all of which are definitely in the "folk art" category artistically.
 
Other than those meticulously researched and executed models which serve as significant contributions to the historical record and qualify as "fine art" (a classification of model which doesn't get near the respect it deserves in the fine arts marketplace,) I'd consider most all scratch-built ship models to qualify as "folk art" of one sort or another, although spanning a wide range of quality and value. 
 
Not to invite thread drift, but I'll mention in passing that a discussion of what the ship modeling community might be able to accomplish in terms of elevating the general public's appreciation of finely crafted ship models, and thereby the price such models command, might be a worthy endeavor. 
 


 

 

 
 
 
 
 

I don't think they are "disciples of a single historical grand master" at all. At the time they were writing, the "average Joe" had a much higher level of education and experience in the manual arts. Boys grew up learning how to drive a nail, shape wood with saws, planes, and knives, and how to keep their tools sharp. Paint and adhesives were easily understood. Perhaps most importantly, many who built ship models in the days before Davis and Underhill (which brings us up to the middle of the 20th Century) came from nautical backgrounds in which they learned the nomenclature and became familiar, often on a first hand basis, with the ships that they modeled. To a boatbuilder, there was little new about setting up, framing, or planking in Davis or Underhill's books. That said, Davis and Underhill introduced amateur hobby modelers to structural construction methods which were previously not widely practiced in the amateur modeling community, to wit: the "built up" or "plank on frame" ship model, rather than the solid carved block hull ship model. 
 
The value of these two early authors was in their publishing works that synthesized between two covers the many diverse crafts that must be practiced in the course of building a high-quality ship model. Davis and Underhill, of course, were also pioneers in publishing and thereby making available accurate plans of particular ships drawn for the modeler's use, without which truly accurate models are not possible. 
 
The rather limited ship modeling literature prior to Davisi and Underhill, and for a while thereafter, suggests that the average amateur ship modeler in the twenties, thirties and forties was turning out what to our eyes were some pretty primitive models. Today, eighty to a hundred years later, some of these models have "matured" to where they are beginning to become noticed as valuable folk art. Obviously, there were extremely detailed and accurate "professionally built" ship models long before the 20th Century, but they were built by highly skilled miniaturists of their time, often working in teams, each with their own trade specialty; not hobbyists working singlehandedly, and the recognizable quality of their execution is what has contributed to their conservation and preservation over centuries. The contemporary models from the Age of Sail we see in museums today are only what we have left of the creme de la creme of models built at their time. 
 
Davis and Underhill were writing during a period in which there was a veritable explosion of "how to do it" literature, Following the First World War, Middle Class folks found themselves with greater leisure time. Modern technology eliminated much of the daily drudgery that previously attended simply living. (Imagine! Store-bought butter and sliced bread!) That leisure time, before radio, and particularly television, proliferated, was filled with hobby pursuits and this created a strong market for instructional literature on related subjects. Before the "DIY" era, craftspeople kept their skills close to the vest. They did not share their "trade secrets" because their trade skills were their "rice bowl." That knowledge is what they sold to make a living. When the general public sought limited trade skill information for use in the pursuit of their hobbies, enterprising authors like Davis and Underhill started writing books containing specialized information that otherwise would have taken their readers a tradesman's long apprenticeship to acquire. What Davis and Underhill, and many others on other subjects, were providing in written form were not the secrets of some single "grand master," but rather, in the main, rather basic instruction in a variety of existing trade skills of the time.  Since then, the technology of ship modeling, as with so much else, has complexified exponentially, as would be immediately apparent from comparing the technological sophistication of the modeling discussed in this forum and the modeling technology discussed in Davis and Underhill.

Honestly, I do not believe too much into 'grand masters', teachings, schools and such. There are few basic carpentry, metal-working and similar techniques applied to a specific subject, that is ship models. Each of the authors quoted uses different short-cuts for one reason or another, such as what they tried to achieve, what tools where available to them, their respective manual skill level, etc.
 
It's a long time since I read Davis and I did not check again before writing here, but seem to remember that his objective was to indicate to the reader techniques that would allow an averagely skilled person to turn out a ship-model without getting too desperate. I seem to remember that the book was written in the early 1930s. At that time most of the speciality tools (hand and machine tools) were available in the UK in principle - Clerkenwell Road in London was a dream of precision tool-shops and -manufacturers at the time, but it would have been much more difficult for the average person outside London at the time to put their hand on them.
 
By coincidence I just finished re-reading Underhill's volume on rigging. He wrote his book just after WW2, when again it was not so easy to find tools and machines (and money) as the UK was recovering slowly from the war economy situation. Underhill is much more pre-occupied with accurate reproduction of the 'real' thing, but also with showing ways to do this without a big tool-kit. His focus is, as stated in the titles of his books, on later 19th/early 20th century ships. This does not mean that many of the techniques he describes would not be applicable to other periods, though there would be less emphasis on iron-work, of course.
 
When looking at such books, one has to make a distinction between the artisanal techniques they describe and their description of representing actual shipbuilding techniques. Underhill, does not claim to be an universal text book - unlike some more modern publications, who make such claims and then fail, because the authors just do not have apparently the necessary breadth and depth of knowlege and the space provided by their publisher.

I don't think they are "disciples of a single historical grand master" at all. At the time they were writing, the "average Joe" had a much higher level of education and experience in the manual arts. Boys grew up learning how to drive a nail, shape wood with saws, planes, and knives, and how to keep their tools sharp. Paint and adhesives were easily understood. Perhaps most importantly, many who built ship models in the days before Davis and Underhill (which brings us up to the middle of the 20th Century) came from nautical backgrounds in which they learned the nomenclature and became familiar, often on a first hand basis, with the ships that they modeled. To a boatbuilder, there was little new about setting up, framing, or planking in Davis or Underhill's books. That said, Davis and Underhill introduced amateur hobby modelers to structural construction methods which were previously not widely practiced in the amateur modeling community, to wit: the "built up" or "plank on frame" ship model, rather than the solid carved block hull ship model. 
 
The value of these two early authors was in their publishing works that synthesized between two covers the many diverse crafts that must be practiced in the course of building a high-quality ship model. Davis and Underhill, of course, were also pioneers in publishing and thereby making available accurate plans of particular ships drawn for the modeler's use, without which truly accurate models are not possible. 
 
The rather limited ship modeling literature prior to Davisi and Underhill, and for a while thereafter, suggests that the average amateur ship modeler in the twenties, thirties and forties was turning out what to our eyes were some pretty primitive models. Today, eighty to a hundred years later, some of these models have "matured" to where they are beginning to become noticed as valuable folk art. Obviously, there were extremely detailed and accurate "professionally built" ship models long before the 20th Century, but they were built by highly skilled miniaturists of their time, often working in teams, each with their own trade specialty; not hobbyists working singlehandedly, and the recognizable quality of their execution is what has contributed to their conservation and preservation over centuries. The contemporary models from the Age of Sail we see in museums today are only what we have left of the creme de la creme of models built at their time. 
 
Davis and Underhill were writing during a period in which there was a veritable explosion of "how to do it" literature, Following the First World War, Middle Class folks found themselves with greater leisure time. Modern technology eliminated much of the daily drudgery that previously attended simply living. (Imagine! Store-bought butter and sliced bread!) That leisure time, before radio, and particularly television, proliferated, was filled with hobby pursuits and this created a strong market for instructional literature on related subjects. Before the "DIY" era, craftspeople kept their skills close to the vest. They did not share their "trade secrets" because their trade skills were their "rice bowl." That knowledge is what they sold to make a living. When the general public sought limited trade skill information for use in the pursuit of their hobbies, enterprising authors like Davis and Underhill started writing books containing specialized information that otherwise would have taken their readers a tradesman's long apprenticeship to acquire. What Davis and Underhill, and many others on other subjects, were providing in written form were not the secrets of some single "grand master," but rather, in the main, rather basic instruction in a variety of existing trade skills of the time.  Since then, the technology of ship modeling, as with so much else, has complexified exponentially, as would be immediately apparent from comparing the technological sophistication of the modeling discussed in this forum and the modeling technology discussed in Davis and Underhill.

I don't think they are "disciples of a single historical grand master" at all. At the time they were writing, the "average Joe" had a much higher level of education and experience in the manual arts. Boys grew up learning how to drive a nail, shape wood with saws, planes, and knives, and how to keep their tools sharp. Paint and adhesives were easily understood. Perhaps most importantly, many who built ship models in the days before Davis and Underhill (which brings us up to the middle of the 20th Century) came from nautical backgrounds in which they learned the nomenclature and became familiar, often on a first hand basis, with the ships that they modeled. To a boatbuilder, there was little new about setting up, framing, or planking in Davis or Underhill's books. That said, Davis and Underhill introduced amateur hobby modelers to structural construction methods which were previously not widely practiced in the amateur modeling community, to wit: the "built up" or "plank on frame" ship model, rather than the solid carved block hull ship model. 
 
The value of these two early authors was in their publishing works that synthesized between two covers the many diverse crafts that must be practiced in the course of building a high-quality ship model. Davis and Underhill, of course, were also pioneers in publishing and thereby making available accurate plans of particular ships drawn for the modeler's use, without which truly accurate models are not possible. 
 
The rather limited ship modeling literature prior to Davisi and Underhill, and for a while thereafter, suggests that the average amateur ship modeler in the twenties, thirties and forties was turning out what to our eyes were some pretty primitive models. Today, eighty to a hundred years later, some of these models have "matured" to where they are beginning to become noticed as valuable folk art. Obviously, there were extremely detailed and accurate "professionally built" ship models long before the 20th Century, but they were built by highly skilled miniaturists of their time, often working in teams, each with their own trade specialty; not hobbyists working singlehandedly, and the recognizable quality of their execution is what has contributed to their conservation and preservation over centuries. The contemporary models from the Age of Sail we see in museums today are only what we have left of the creme de la creme of models built at their time. 
 
Davis and Underhill were writing during a period in which there was a veritable explosion of "how to do it" literature, Following the First World War, Middle Class folks found themselves with greater leisure time. Modern technology eliminated much of the daily drudgery that previously attended simply living. (Imagine! Store-bought butter and sliced bread!) That leisure time, before radio, and particularly television, proliferated, was filled with hobby pursuits and this created a strong market for instructional literature on related subjects. Before the "DIY" era, craftspeople kept their skills close to the vest. They did not share their "trade secrets" because their trade skills were their "rice bowl." That knowledge is what they sold to make a living. When the general public sought limited trade skill information for use in the pursuit of their hobbies, enterprising authors like Davis and Underhill started writing books containing specialized information that otherwise would have taken their readers a tradesman's long apprenticeship to acquire. What Davis and Underhill, and many others on other subjects, were providing in written form were not the secrets of some single "grand master," but rather, in the main, rather basic instruction in a variety of existing trade skills of the time.  Since then, the technology of ship modeling, as with so much else, has complexified exponentially, as would be immediately apparent from comparing the technological sophistication of the modeling discussed in this forum and the modeling technology discussed in Davis and Underhill.

I don't think they are "disciples of a single historical grand master" at all. At the time they were writing, the "average Joe" had a much higher level of education and experience in the manual arts. Boys grew up learning how to drive a nail, shape wood with saws, planes, and knives, and how to keep their tools sharp. Paint and adhesives were easily understood. Perhaps most importantly, many who built ship models in the days before Davis and Underhill (which brings us up to the middle of the 20th Century) came from nautical backgrounds in which they learned the nomenclature and became familiar, often on a first hand basis, with the ships that they modeled. To a boatbuilder, there was little new about setting up, framing, or planking in Davis or Underhill's books. That said, Davis and Underhill introduced amateur hobby modelers to structural construction methods which were previously not widely practiced in the amateur modeling community, to wit: the "built up" or "plank on frame" ship model, rather than the solid carved block hull ship model. 
 
The value of these two early authors was in their publishing works that synthesized between two covers the many diverse crafts that must be practiced in the course of building a high-quality ship model. Davis and Underhill, of course, were also pioneers in publishing and thereby making available accurate plans of particular ships drawn for the modeler's use, without which truly accurate models are not possible. 
 
The rather limited ship modeling literature prior to Davisi and Underhill, and for a while thereafter, suggests that the average amateur ship modeler in the twenties, thirties and forties was turning out what to our eyes were some pretty primitive models. Today, eighty to a hundred years later, some of these models have "matured" to where they are beginning to become noticed as valuable folk art. Obviously, there were extremely detailed and accurate "professionally built" ship models long before the 20th Century, but they were built by highly skilled miniaturists of their time, often working in teams, each with their own trade specialty; not hobbyists working singlehandedly, and the recognizable quality of their execution is what has contributed to their conservation and preservation over centuries. The contemporary models from the Age of Sail we see in museums today are only what we have left of the creme de la creme of models built at their time. 
 
Davis and Underhill were writing during a period in which there was a veritable explosion of "how to do it" literature, Following the First World War, Middle Class folks found themselves with greater leisure time. Modern technology eliminated much of the daily drudgery that previously attended simply living. (Imagine! Store-bought butter and sliced bread!) That leisure time, before radio, and particularly television, proliferated, was filled with hobby pursuits and this created a strong market for instructional literature on related subjects. Before the "DIY" era, craftspeople kept their skills close to the vest. They did not share their "trade secrets" because their trade skills were their "rice bowl." That knowledge is what they sold to make a living. When the general public sought limited trade skill information for use in the pursuit of their hobbies, enterprising authors like Davis and Underhill started writing books containing specialized information that otherwise would have taken their readers a tradesman's long apprenticeship to acquire. What Davis and Underhill, and many others on other subjects, were providing in written form were not the secrets of some single "grand master," but rather, in the main, rather basic instruction in a variety of existing trade skills of the time.  Since then, the technology of ship modeling, as with so much else, has complexified exponentially, as would be immediately apparent from comparing the technological sophistication of the modeling discussed in this forum and the modeling technology discussed in Davis and Underhill.

I don't think they are "disciples of a single historical grand master" at all. At the time they were writing, the "average Joe" had a much higher level of education and experience in the manual arts. Boys grew up learning how to drive a nail, shape wood with saws, planes, and knives, and how to keep their tools sharp. Paint and adhesives were easily understood. Perhaps most importantly, many who built ship models in the days before Davis and Underhill (which brings us up to the middle of the 20th Century) came from nautical backgrounds in which they learned the nomenclature and became familiar, often on a first hand basis, with the ships that they modeled. To a boatbuilder, there was little new about setting up, framing, or planking in Davis or Underhill's books. That said, Davis and Underhill introduced amateur hobby modelers to structural construction methods which were previously not widely practiced in the amateur modeling community, to wit: the "built up" or "plank on frame" ship model, rather than the solid carved block hull ship model. 
 
The value of these two early authors was in their publishing works that synthesized between two covers the many diverse crafts that must be practiced in the course of building a high-quality ship model. Davis and Underhill, of course, were also pioneers in publishing and thereby making available accurate plans of particular ships drawn for the modeler's use, without which truly accurate models are not possible. 
 
The rather limited ship modeling literature prior to Davisi and Underhill, and for a while thereafter, suggests that the average amateur ship modeler in the twenties, thirties and forties was turning out what to our eyes were some pretty primitive models. Today, eighty to a hundred years later, some of these models have "matured" to where they are beginning to become noticed as valuable folk art. Obviously, there were extremely detailed and accurate "professionally built" ship models long before the 20th Century, but they were built by highly skilled miniaturists of their time, often working in teams, each with their own trade specialty; not hobbyists working singlehandedly, and the recognizable quality of their execution is what has contributed to their conservation and preservation over centuries. The contemporary models from the Age of Sail we see in museums today are only what we have left of the creme de la creme of models built at their time. 
 
Davis and Underhill were writing during a period in which there was a veritable explosion of "how to do it" literature, Following the First World War, Middle Class folks found themselves with greater leisure time. Modern technology eliminated much of the daily drudgery that previously attended simply living. (Imagine! Store-bought butter and sliced bread!) That leisure time, before radio, and particularly television, proliferated, was filled with hobby pursuits and this created a strong market for instructional literature on related subjects. Before the "DIY" era, craftspeople kept their skills close to the vest. They did not share their "trade secrets" because their trade skills were their "rice bowl." That knowledge is what they sold to make a living. When the general public sought limited trade skill information for use in the pursuit of their hobbies, enterprising authors like Davis and Underhill started writing books containing specialized information that otherwise would have taken their readers a tradesman's long apprenticeship to acquire. What Davis and Underhill, and many others on other subjects, were providing in written form were not the secrets of some single "grand master," but rather, in the main, rather basic instruction in a variety of existing trade skills of the time.  Since then, the technology of ship modeling, as with so much else, has complexified exponentially, as would be immediately apparent from comparing the technological sophistication of the modeling discussed in this forum and the modeling technology discussed in Davis and Underhill.

I don't think they are "disciples of a single historical grand master" at all. At the time they were writing, the "average Joe" had a much higher level of education and experience in the manual arts. Boys grew up learning how to drive a nail, shape wood with saws, planes, and knives, and how to keep their tools sharp. Paint and adhesives were easily understood. Perhaps most importantly, many who built ship models in the days before Davis and Underhill (which brings us up to the middle of the 20th Century) came from nautical backgrounds in which they learned the nomenclature and became familiar, often on a first hand basis, with the ships that they modeled. To a boatbuilder, there was little new about setting up, framing, or planking in Davis or Underhill's books. That said, Davis and Underhill introduced amateur hobby modelers to structural construction methods which were previously not widely practiced in the amateur modeling community, to wit: the "built up" or "plank on frame" ship model, rather than the solid carved block hull ship model. 
 
The value of these two early authors was in their publishing works that synthesized between two covers the many diverse crafts that must be practiced in the course of building a high-quality ship model. Davis and Underhill, of course, were also pioneers in publishing and thereby making available accurate plans of particular ships drawn for the modeler's use, without which truly accurate models are not possible. 
 
The rather limited ship modeling literature prior to Davisi and Underhill, and for a while thereafter, suggests that the average amateur ship modeler in the twenties, thirties and forties was turning out what to our eyes were some pretty primitive models. Today, eighty to a hundred years later, some of these models have "matured" to where they are beginning to become noticed as valuable folk art. Obviously, there were extremely detailed and accurate "professionally built" ship models long before the 20th Century, but they were built by highly skilled miniaturists of their time, often working in teams, each with their own trade specialty; not hobbyists working singlehandedly, and the recognizable quality of their execution is what has contributed to their conservation and preservation over centuries. The contemporary models from the Age of Sail we see in museums today are only what we have left of the creme de la creme of models built at their time. 
 
Davis and Underhill were writing during a period in which there was a veritable explosion of "how to do it" literature, Following the First World War, Middle Class folks found themselves with greater leisure time. Modern technology eliminated much of the daily drudgery that previously attended simply living. (Imagine! Store-bought butter and sliced bread!) That leisure time, before radio, and particularly television, proliferated, was filled with hobby pursuits and this created a strong market for instructional literature on related subjects. Before the "DIY" era, craftspeople kept their skills close to the vest. They did not share their "trade secrets" because their trade skills were their "rice bowl." That knowledge is what they sold to make a living. When the general public sought limited trade skill information for use in the pursuit of their hobbies, enterprising authors like Davis and Underhill started writing books containing specialized information that otherwise would have taken their readers a tradesman's long apprenticeship to acquire. What Davis and Underhill, and many others on other subjects, were providing in written form were not the secrets of some single "grand master," but rather, in the main, rather basic instruction in a variety of existing trade skills of the time.  Since then, the technology of ship modeling, as with so much else, has complexified exponentially, as would be immediately apparent from comparing the technological sophistication of the modeling discussed in this forum and the modeling technology discussed in Davis and Underhill.

I don't think they are "disciples of a single historical grand master" at all. At the time they were writing, the "average Joe" had a much higher level of education and experience in the manual arts. Boys grew up learning how to drive a nail, shape wood with saws, planes, and knives, and how to keep their tools sharp. Paint and adhesives were easily understood. Perhaps most importantly, many who built ship models in the days before Davis and Underhill (which brings us up to the middle of the 20th Century) came from nautical backgrounds in which they learned the nomenclature and became familiar, often on a first hand basis, with the ships that they modeled. To a boatbuilder, there was little new about setting up, framing, or planking in Davis or Underhill's books. That said, Davis and Underhill introduced amateur hobby modelers to structural construction methods which were previously not widely practiced in the amateur modeling community, to wit: the "built up" or "plank on frame" ship model, rather than the solid carved block hull ship model. 
 
The value of these two early authors was in their publishing works that synthesized between two covers the many diverse crafts that must be practiced in the course of building a high-quality ship model. Davis and Underhill, of course, were also pioneers in publishing and thereby making available accurate plans of particular ships drawn for the modeler's use, without which truly accurate models are not possible. 
 
The rather limited ship modeling literature prior to Davisi and Underhill, and for a while thereafter, suggests that the average amateur ship modeler in the twenties, thirties and forties was turning out what to our eyes were some pretty primitive models. Today, eighty to a hundred years later, some of these models have "matured" to where they are beginning to become noticed as valuable folk art. Obviously, there were extremely detailed and accurate "professionally built" ship models long before the 20th Century, but they were built by highly skilled miniaturists of their time, often working in teams, each with their own trade specialty; not hobbyists working singlehandedly, and the recognizable quality of their execution is what has contributed to their conservation and preservation over centuries. The contemporary models from the Age of Sail we see in museums today are only what we have left of the creme de la creme of models built at their time. 
 
Davis and Underhill were writing during a period in which there was a veritable explosion of "how to do it" literature, Following the First World War, Middle Class folks found themselves with greater leisure time. Modern technology eliminated much of the daily drudgery that previously attended simply living. (Imagine! Store-bought butter and sliced bread!) That leisure time, before radio, and particularly television, proliferated, was filled with hobby pursuits and this created a strong market for instructional literature on related subjects. Before the "DIY" era, craftspeople kept their skills close to the vest. They did not share their "trade secrets" because their trade skills were their "rice bowl." That knowledge is what they sold to make a living. When the general public sought limited trade skill information for use in the pursuit of their hobbies, enterprising authors like Davis and Underhill started writing books containing specialized information that otherwise would have taken their readers a tradesman's long apprenticeship to acquire. What Davis and Underhill, and many others on other subjects, were providing in written form were not the secrets of some single "grand master," but rather, in the main, rather basic instruction in a variety of existing trade skills of the time.  Since then, the technology of ship modeling, as with so much else, has complexified exponentially, as would be immediately apparent from comparing the technological sophistication of the modeling discussed in this forum and the modeling technology discussed in Davis and Underhill.

If their usage has been somewhat superseded by others, they are the inspiration for those that have come since, myself included.

It helps to have some perspective about what the hull construction methods were before they published.  They cracked open a new world, but both were grounded in vessels well after 1860.  They are a very dim light into how vessels before 1860 were built.  I consider them a general inspiration, but the specifics for vessels from the real age of sail are best obtained elsewhere.
Davis came from WWI emergency wooden hull construction that was an adaptation of steel engineering techniques back to wood background.  It has only the most general similarities with the then lost evolution of traditional hull construction.
They are both best seen as an important but small part of a now very large buffet of information. 
Both Petrejus and Longridge should be added to your canon.

Nils, I became curious about whether any of the movie film Tompkins took of Wander Bird's voyage around the Horn might have found its way onto the internet. I found this piece on YouTube, a newsreel clip that is, of course, dated and quite hokey to our modern eyes, but full of pictures of the deck details which may be hard to find elsewhere. Enjoy!:
  
  

I know her well. She was on S.F. Bay for many decades, known as Wander Bird.  She was a rig-less houseboat in Sausalito when I first met her in the early seventies, thirty years or so after she'd completed her voyage west around Cape Horn to San Francisco before the War. Warwick Tompkins had skippered her around the Horn with his wife, two young children, and a paid hand. Warwick was a well-known local yachtsman, as to this day is his son, Warwick "Commodore" Tompkins, who was four at the time of their voyage.
Warwick M. Tompkins wrote two books about his family's voyage around Cape Horn in Wander Bird: Fifty South to Fifty South, 1938, W.W.Norton & Co., NY and Two Sailors, 1939, The Viking Press, NY, (a story of the voyage written from the perspective of the Tompkins  children.) Both of these books are full of good photographs showing details of the vessel which would likely be very helpful to the modeler. Fifty South by Fifty South,  contains together with the expected narrative of the voyage, an appendix containing many technical details on the vessel . Warwick Tompkins also made a 35mm movie of the voyage entitled In the Wake of the Clippers, which a modeler would probably be interested in watching. I've never seen the movie and I don't know if it is still extant. I'm sure "Commodore Thompkins" would know. I expect he could be reached through the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco.
 
Wander Bird was later acquired by Hal Sommer, a local tug boat skipper and acquaintance of mine, who spent years restoring "the Bird" to mint condition and sailing her on the Bay. Wander Bird was for many years the centerpiece of the classic yacht community on San Francisco Bay. I was fortunate to be able to witness a lot of the work done on her and I learned much about larger wooden shipbuilding by watching Hal, his son Ross, and other "old timers" working on her.  Wander Bird was ultimately sold and moved up to Washington, I believe, and then returned to Germany as a museum ship. 
 
The restored Bird sailing off Yellow Bluff heading home to Sausalito, CA on S.F. Bay. Note the two crew aloft at the mainmast doubling. I have no idea what they are doing up there, other than "skylarking," but I doubt that. Hal ran a tight ship so I doubt they were up there for fun. They wouldn't have been raising setting a topsail in than wind and on that course and there's no evidence of one on deck, 
 

 

 
She carried a rafee topsail earlier in her life:
 

 
I'm looking forward to your build log!

Hello Bob,
with geat interest I read your lines about the schoners history under name Wander Bird. Many thanks for your input here, and for the nice pictures you provided. Its been a pleasure in building the model so far to date, and you will see I`m just beginning with the planking. The hull is a lightweight contruction, and the red cedar planks I`m using are leftovers from my earlier Chebeque build
Best regards
Nils
 

I know her well. She was on S.F. Bay for many decades, known as Wander Bird.  She was a rig-less houseboat in Sausalito when I first met her in the early seventies, thirty years or so after she'd completed her voyage west around Cape Horn to San Francisco before the War. Warwick Tompkins had skippered her around the Horn with his wife, two young children, and a paid hand. Warwick was a well-known local yachtsman, as to this day is his son, Warwick "Commodore" Tompkins, who was four at the time of their voyage.
Warwick M. Tompkins wrote two books about his family's voyage around Cape Horn in Wander Bird: Fifty South to Fifty South, 1938, W.W.Norton & Co., NY and Two Sailors, 1939, The Viking Press, NY, (a story of the voyage written from the perspective of the Tompkins  children.) Both of these books are full of good photographs showing details of the vessel which would likely be very helpful to the modeler. Fifty South by Fifty South,  contains together with the expected narrative of the voyage, an appendix containing many technical details on the vessel . Warwick Tompkins also made a 35mm movie of the voyage entitled In the Wake of the Clippers, which a modeler would probably be interested in watching. I've never seen the movie and I don't know if it is still extant. I'm sure "Commodore Thompkins" would know. I expect he could be reached through the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco.
 
Wander Bird was later acquired by Hal Sommer, a local tug boat skipper and acquaintance of mine, who spent years restoring "the Bird" to mint condition and sailing her on the Bay. Wander Bird was for many years the centerpiece of the classic yacht community on San Francisco Bay. I was fortunate to be able to witness a lot of the work done on her and I learned much about larger wooden shipbuilding by watching Hal, his son Ross, and other "old timers" working on her.  Wander Bird was ultimately sold and moved up to Washington, I believe, and then returned to Germany as a museum ship. 
 
The restored Bird sailing off Yellow Bluff heading home to Sausalito, CA on S.F. Bay. Note the two crew aloft at the mainmast doubling. I have no idea what they are doing up there, other than "skylarking," but I doubt that. Hal ran a tight ship so I doubt they were up there for fun. They wouldn't have been raising setting a topsail in than wind and on that course and there's no evidence of one on deck, 
 

 

 
She carried a rafee topsail earlier in her life:
 

 
I'm looking forward to your build log!

I know her well. She was on S.F. Bay for many decades, known as Wander Bird.  She was a rig-less houseboat in Sausalito when I first met her in the early seventies, thirty years or so after she'd completed her voyage west around Cape Horn to San Francisco before the War. Warwick Tompkins had skippered her around the Horn with his wife, two young children, and a paid hand. Warwick was a well-known local yachtsman, as to this day is his son, Warwick "Commodore" Tompkins, who was four at the time of their voyage.
Warwick M. Tompkins wrote two books about his family's voyage around Cape Horn in Wander Bird: Fifty South to Fifty South, 1938, W.W.Norton & Co., NY and Two Sailors, 1939, The Viking Press, NY, (a story of the voyage written from the perspective of the Tompkins  children.) Both of these books are full of good photographs showing details of the vessel which would likely be very helpful to the modeler. Fifty South by Fifty South,  contains together with the expected narrative of the voyage, an appendix containing many technical details on the vessel . Warwick Tompkins also made a 35mm movie of the voyage entitled In the Wake of the Clippers, which a modeler would probably be interested in watching. I've never seen the movie and I don't know if it is still extant. I'm sure "Commodore Thompkins" would know. I expect he could be reached through the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco.
 
Wander Bird was later acquired by Hal Sommer, a local tug boat skipper and acquaintance of mine, who spent years restoring "the Bird" to mint condition and sailing her on the Bay. Wander Bird was for many years the centerpiece of the classic yacht community on San Francisco Bay. I was fortunate to be able to witness a lot of the work done on her and I learned much about larger wooden shipbuilding by watching Hal, his son Ross, and other "old timers" working on her.  Wander Bird was ultimately sold and moved up to Washington, I believe, and then returned to Germany as a museum ship. 
 
The restored Bird sailing off Yellow Bluff heading home to Sausalito, CA on S.F. Bay. Note the two crew aloft at the mainmast doubling. I have no idea what they are doing up there, other than "skylarking," but I doubt that. Hal ran a tight ship so I doubt they were up there for fun. They wouldn't have been raising setting a topsail in than wind and on that course and there's no evidence of one on deck, 
 

 

 
She carried a rafee topsail earlier in her life:
 

 
I'm looking forward to your build log!

For those who can't bring themselves to sacrifice a pair of needle nose pliers, or just love an excuse to buy another tool, "store boughten" "wire looping pliers" are now available from jewelers' supply houses in many different styles and sizes, permitting three or more different sized loops from a single pair of pliers. 
 
For really small eyes, I resort to using a drill bit of the desired size, bend a length of wire over the middle of the drill bit, and, holding the two ends of the wire, use the drill bit to twist up the wire ends. I then slide out the drill bit and snip the "pig tail" to the desired length. The twisted ends hold really tiny eyebolts better when glued into holes, too.!
 
 
 

 

 
 

Just a tip if you haven't tried it as yet: You can practice technique using water as a medium on absorbent paper, perhaps with a touch of watercolor or food coloring mixed in if your paper doesn't show much wet/dry contrast. Often, just plain water will show up quite well. Brown paper bag paper works well because it gets dark when wet. In this way, There's really no clean-up after practicing that needs to be done unless you've run some colored water through your gun and even then, all that's required is to just rinse it out. 

Hi Barb,
Does your kit come with copper sheathing material or are you thinking of adding on your own?    From photos of the Model Shipways' Pride of Baltimore models they appear to have a green (oxidized copper)  painted bottom which is more realistic looking than the vast majority of the copper sheathed models seen here at MSW and elsewhere. 
Allan
 
 

I thought i had better look up what the internet says about the orientation of the spinnaker pole beak:-
 
Whisker poles should be flown with the jaws facing down. When taking down a whisker pole, the jib sheet usually wants to drop down-and-out of the end fitting. Spinnaker poles are flown jaws facing up, as the spinnaker sheets usually want to lift up-and-out of the end fitting.