Bob Cleek

MSW Sponsor USA Airbrush Supply has a special LETTERTOSANTA discount offer from now until Wednesday December 3, 2020.  25% off their usual prices.  USA Airbrush Supply always has the lowest Badger Airbrush products prices so 25% off can't be beat.

Yes, a very light stain rubbed across the plank seams will end up in the seams and show darker. If you want light colored decks, seal the decks with a clear sealer, then apply the stain and rub it all off the sealed deck, leaving the stain in the deck seams. When it comes to deck seams, the thinner they are, the better. At scale viewing distance, there isn't much to them.

Hi. It could be also called as "square-top, or fat-head, mainsail"
https://www.sailmagazine.com/diy/know-how-all-about-mainsails
Thx

I have found the best, and most economical source of glass for model cases is a picture-framing shop. (I go to "Michael's," a crafts store chain in the US, which has a framing department.) Give them the exact size of the panes you want and tell them they have to be exactly cut. What you want, and they will have, is UV-filtered art framing glass. This glass has an ultra-violet light inhibiting feature that reduces damage from UV exposure. (Which isn't to say you can then display the model in front of a sunny window!) Ordinary window glaziers aren't ordinarily used to dealing with assembling fine furniture pieces like ship model cases.

I can't speak to New Zealand, but here in the States the most desirable ebony is embargoed pursuant to the Lacey Act, 16 USC 3371-3378. 
 
"Gibson Guitar Corporation was raided twice by federal authorities, in 2009 and 2011. Federal prosecutors seized wood from Gibson facilities, alleging that Gibson had purchased smuggled Madagascar ebony and Indian rosewood.Gibson initially denied wrongdoing and insisted that the federal government was bullying them.  In August 2012, Gibson entered into a Criminal Enforcement Agreement with the Department of Justice, admitting to violating the Lacey Act. The terms of the agreement required Gibson to pay a fine of $300,000 in addition to a $50,000 community payment, and to abide by the terms of the Lacey Act in the future.
 
For violating the Lacey Act, Lumber Liquidators was sentenced in 2016 to $7.8 million in criminal fines, $969,175 in criminal forfeiture and more than $1.23 million in community service payments for illegal lumber trafficking. The sentence also included five years of probation, and additional government oversight. The U.S. Department of Justice said it was the largest financial penalty ever issued under the Lacey Act.
 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacey_Act_of_1900

Black ebony is nearly commercially extinct at this point. Pure black ebony only comes from the heartwood of very old trees, most all of which are now gone. What little is available is not pure black and full of checks and voids. Real ebony is very oily and presents challenges when gluing.  The prices are astronomical. Ebony is also subject now to various national and international import bans. Some nations will not permit the importation of items made of ebony without acceptable documentation of the age of the wood being prior to the effective date of various endangered species laws. This has caused a lot of musicians with instruments containing ebony and rosewood a lot of grief when they try to bring their instruments into a foreign country to play at concerts. Your only real option is to take another species and stain it black. Some old modelers have stashes of ebony and real European boxwood, but good luck trying to find any on the retail market these days.

Yes, a very light stain rubbed across the plank seams will end up in the seams and show darker. If you want light colored decks, seal the decks with a clear sealer, then apply the stain and rub it all off the sealed deck, leaving the stain in the deck seams. When it comes to deck seams, the thinner they are, the better. At scale viewing distance, there isn't much to them.

I use a chisel tipped marker that is filled with archival ink.  You can get them on the internet and the ink doesn't bleed.  It makes the job so much easier.

Clear nail polish thinned with acetone works, as well, and the bottles come with a handy built-in brush. Getting the acetone into the bottle can be a pain, though. I use a hypodermic syringe to fill the bottles through their narrow openings. Nail polish will dry glossy, but if you thin it enough, there's no gloss when it soaks into the line.. It's handy for its quick-drying characteristics and the built-in brush.

Welcome to MSW Stephen,
Black tissue gift wrap paper works beautifully.  You can get a package at a craft store like Michaels for a under $2US and it  will last a long time.   The appearance is much more clear than pencil or inked edges but does take a little more time than the pencil or inking method.  If the scale is smaller, such as 1:98,  I would go with pencil or marker ink.  
Allan

Yes indeed, Bob.  I should have mentioned that one as well.
 
John

And then there's white (clear) shellac. A touch with a loaded paintbrush wicks quickly into the knot or line and dries very fast. It's invisible when dry. Line can be shaped as desired while it is drying. It cleans up easily with denatured alcohol and, most importantly, can be reversed after drying by applying alcohol again to the shellac, which will then dissolve, as before. Oh, and did i mention, it's the cheapest of all options and also serves as a great wood sealer and finish.
 
Your mileage may vary, of course.

Sometimes unusual arrangements get called whatever the master wants to call them. On the Thomas W. Lawson, the only seven-masted schooner ever built, they never could make up their minds what the names of the seven sails were. Somewhere on the internet there's a chart of all the names they were called at different times under different masters. (Nautical trivia quiz answer: fore, main, mizzen, spanker, jigger, driver, and pusher.)
 
I'd call that sail a jib-headed mainsail.  The head isn't cut far enough down the leech to make it a leg-o-mutton, I'd think. It's an interesting sail. Note that the leech is cut away from the mast at the head and there's a short yard at the head that's on a bridle to the block on the crane, which prevents the fouling of the halyard block against the mast. 
 
Above the jib-headed main, was flown a main topsail with its clew led to the end of the main boom, a once-common sail now rarely encountered.  Danged If I know if it had a particular name besides a main topsail. Turner employed main topsails clewed to the boom in many of his brigantines. A picture or two is worth a thousand words:
 

 
A contemporary painting of Matson's Turner-built Lurline flying a boom-clewed main topsail.
 

 
Photo of Lurline with main topsail brailed aloft as shown in the photo in the original post.
 

 

 

 
Photos of Matthew W. Turner, a recently-built sail-training vessel designed to meet current USCG passenger regulations, but designed based on Turner-built brigantines and flying her main topsail.
 
Interestingly, it appears vessels with this arrangement flew their ensigns from the mainmast truck.

Sometimes unusual arrangements get called whatever the master wants to call them. On the Thomas W. Lawson, the only seven-masted schooner ever built, they never could make up their minds what the names of the seven sails were. Somewhere on the internet there's a chart of all the names they were called at different times under different masters. (Nautical trivia quiz answer: fore, main, mizzen, spanker, jigger, driver, and pusher.)
 
I'd call that sail a jib-headed mainsail.  The head isn't cut far enough down the leech to make it a leg-o-mutton, I'd think. It's an interesting sail. Note that the leech is cut away from the mast at the head and there's a short yard at the head that's on a bridle to the block on the crane, which prevents the fouling of the halyard block against the mast. 
 
Above the jib-headed main, was flown a main topsail with its clew led to the end of the main boom, a once-common sail now rarely encountered.  Danged If I know if it had a particular name besides a main topsail. Turner employed main topsails clewed to the boom in many of his brigantines. A picture or two is worth a thousand words:
 

 
A contemporary painting of Matson's Turner-built Lurline flying a boom-clewed main topsail.
 

 
Photo of Lurline with main topsail brailed aloft as shown in the photo in the original post.
 

 

 

 
Photos of Matthew W. Turner, a recently-built sail-training vessel designed to meet current USCG passenger regulations, but designed based on Turner-built brigantines and flying her main topsail.
 
Interestingly, it appears vessels with this arrangement flew their ensigns from the mainmast truck.

Well, yeah, but you'd expect that with a Polish crew!    
 
(I hope I didn't offend anyone with a Polish joke!)
 

Adding to Eberhard and Dr.PR's comments, this discussion reminds me of something my late boatbuilding mentor, a older fellow who'd been one of the last to have gone through a traditional trade apprenticeship and had run a boatyard of his own for perhaps fifty years, said to me on the subject: "A house framing carpenter cuts to the nearest quarter inch, a finish carpenter cuts to the nearest thirty-second of an inch, and a boat builder cuts to the nearest boat." His point was that it isn't the measurements that matter, but rather the fit of the piece to the ones next to it, so forget about the dimensions on the plans and pay attention to what you are fitting together.
 
Any sort of ship or boat plans, at least until the advent of CAD, are never absolutely accurate. What they are, really, is simply "scaled plans for drawing full scale plans." You can't draw a scale line fine enough, even at 1:48. Back in the day, they'd draw the lines of a 150' ship on a six or seven foot long piece of drafting vellum and the scale lines drawn would still be so wide if blown up to full scale that you couldn't take accurate measurements from the plans. While at modeling scales, the problem isn't as great, how often do we see plans drawn to 1:48, even? The rule in full size engineering is always that measurements are never to be taken from the drawings, but rather must be taken from the notation of the distance on the drawing. In modeling, we can cheat somewhat, but only if we "build to the boat" and not to the plans. What the pre-CAD draftsmen did was to take up a "table of offsets" from the drawings with dividers and read the distances from scales, knowing that no matter how carefully they placed their divider points on the center of the line, the table of offsets would never be perfectly accurate. Indeed, if the offsets for a 150' ship were accurate to within an inch or two, they were quite good. 
 
The purpose of the table of offsets was to enable the loftsman to loft the patterns for the ship full size. The loftsman takes the table of offsets and the lines drawings and uses these to draw the vessel full size on the lofting floor. When doing so, the loftsman uses battens to spring fair curves, using the offsets as a guide, but the offset points are rarely all on the fair curve sprung with the batten. (There are many tricks to the loftsman's trade. In "fairing the lines" from the draftsman's offsets, the loftsman uses the "diagonals" to test the accuracy of the lofting, for example. Further discussion of this is beyond the scope of this post, but for those interested, Lofting, by Alan Vaitses is highly recommended.) The loftsman trusts the batten, not the draftsman's offset measurements to develop the full size patterns for the shape-defining parts of the ship. Only once in a while, when there are a number of identical vessels to be built, will you get lucky and find that a loftsman has generated a corrected table of offsets from the full size lofting that are "tighter than a gnat's ***." In this case, there will usually be a notation on the table of offsets like "Corrected offsets." or "Offsets as lofted." Otherwise, the offsets will have to be "faired" on the loft floor.
 
The loftsman's full size patterns were usually only those essential to get the vessel "in frame." From there, the "wood butchers" "built to the ship," not to the plans. They'd set up a few basic frames, sometimes as few as as a midship frame at the widest beam and a couple forward and aft of that, plus a stem and transom. Then they'd tack battens sprung across the faces of these frames and the resulting "basket" defined the shape of all the frames in between. In such fashion, a fair hull would be constructed. This is sort of the way planked models used to be built, although once in a while, an author would draw up a full set of frames and publish them for modelers to use, as we see in the old modeling books by Davis and his contemporaries.
 
Today, CAD makes it possible, in theory, at least, to generate far more accurate drawings and it seems modelers are seduced by CAD and then find themselves sucked into believing they have to become micro-machinists using extremely accurate (and expensive) machines with DRO, or even CNC, to turn out parts accurate to .0005 if they want to build a good model, even from a kit, but this isn't so. "If it looks right, it is right." was the old time ship builder's maxim and it serves the modeler as well in miniature as it did the old timers working in full size. The old timers didn't have to worry about cutting each side perfectly square and to exact size when making a box. They just cut half of the sides a bit large and when the box was built, they planed the overhangs on the edges to fit, yielding a perfectly jointed cube. I'm not knocking CNC, for it certainly has it's place. (We wouldn't have IKEA knock-down furniture without it!) For building one-off models, though, the old fashioned measuring tools are more than sufficient and often much less expensive, not to mention a joy to own and even collect. Our goal is to create a compelling impression of reality in miniature. That doesn't always mean NASA-level tolerances in our measurements. (Even at that, John Glenn orbited the earth in a rocket ship designed with slide rules!) Sometimes, even slight deviations from exact scaling, such a a smidgen smaller rigging lines, can actually produce a more compelling impression of reality than perfectly sized ones, and that's when modeling becomes an art and not just a craft. So as the man says, "Don't sweat the small stuff."
 

And then there's white (clear) shellac. A touch with a loaded paintbrush wicks quickly into the knot or line and dries very fast. It's invisible when dry. Line can be shaped as desired while it is drying. It cleans up easily with denatured alcohol and, most importantly, can be reversed after drying by applying alcohol again to the shellac, which will then dissolve, as before. Oh, and did i mention, it's the cheapest of all options and also serves as a great wood sealer and finish.
 
Your mileage may vary, of course.

Well, yeah, but you'd expect that with a Polish crew!    
 
(I hope I didn't offend anyone with a Polish joke!)
 

Well, there are "cracks," and then there are crevasses! But for cracks, I sometimes find a furniture finisher's crayon useful. These wax "filler sticks" or "crayons" come in a wide range of wood colors and can be purchased individually or in sets with a range of color. All you do is warm the wax in your hand to soften it a bit and apply to the crack and then rub away the excess. Fine furniture finishers use them to fill open joints and nicks and dings, as do gunsmiths on banged up gunstocks. They cost around three bucks apiece.
 

 
Color chart:  https://woodrepairproducts.com/product/fil-stiks/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAwf39BRCCARIsALXWETxVSo6lB0Guzfus1DrsLNcS6EnG11mDoXB0vhFS4_SFn8DkaBctn1kaAvsZEALw_wcB

The Star has no permanent backstay. You can see the runners coming down about halfway down the cockpit. Upwind it is used to control the shape of the mast and hence the shape of the sail. The mast has prebend so if you pull on the intermediate backstay it will add draft to the main and increase power. If you pull on the upper it will twist off the top of the main and depower the main. The main by itself will hold the rig up.

Even on a fairly close reach the leeward backstay has to be released so the main can go out.
 
Downwind it is an entirely different story. The backstays hold the rig up if there is any breeze. Jibing can be character building as you have to pull the leeward backstay in as the boom comes to the centerline on the boat and them the new leeward backstay has to be let off so the boom came go out. In twenty knots this happens quickly and if you make a mistake the rig goes over the front of the boat.

I recently picked up a few boxes of small tungsten bits in metric sizes .4mm, .55mm and .6mm for a song. I believe they are used for drilling printed circuit boards etc. They were literally $2.50 for 10 bits including the box. For any others I do what was suggested and grab the packs on Amazon or what they call 'Jobber' packages (a whole series of sizes in a plain brown box). I haven't used the small bits yet except to try them out and they seem sharp as can be and leave very clean holes.
 
 
 
 

Well said Bob!

If Cornhusker’s  question refers to building a J Boat Endeavour kit it may not follow the actual practice of planking landed in a rabbit cut into the stem and he will have to follow the kit designer’s system.
 
If on the other hand, if he wants to build a J Boat from scratch two books have recently been published that warrant his attention:
 
The first is “No Ordinary Being” by Llewelyn Howland.  This is a biography of W. Starling Burgess.  Burgess designed three J Boats; Enterprise (1930), Rainbow (1934) and Ranger (1937 in collaboration with Olin Stevens).  The book contains small scale lines drawings for two boats- Enterprise and Ranger.  A large scale lines drawing for Ranger is printed on the endpapers but the book’s center crease runs thru the body plan.  Unfortunately no structural drawings are included.
 
A more useful book is Volume I of Roger Taylor’s biography of L. Francis Herreshoff.  Herreshoff designed one J Boat, Whirlwind, an unsuccessful contender for the 1934 cup and the book’s chapter on the selection of the American Defender makes interesting reading.  The selection committee wound up choosing Rainbow that was generally considered to be slower than the British Challenger.  Despite sailing a slower boat, the Americans narrowly managed to keep the cup.
 
One could probably build a model of Whirlwind from the information contained in Howland’s book.  Mystic Seaport, the publisher has chosen to print a lines drawing and a construction drawing as large fold out plates.
 
The second volume of Howland’s two volume set deals with Herreshoff’s subsequent career designing cruising boats and writing for the Rudder Magazine.  This is my favorite as it includes his Prudence (H-23) sloop, a boat that my father built right after WW II.  There is a brief quotation from a letter that my father wrote to Herreshoff about building the boat.
 
Roger

Nor the famed Danish spidsgatter racers with their uncommonly high and large rigs and carry no backstays at all !
 

Well, there are "cracks," and then there are crevasses! But for cracks, I sometimes find a furniture finisher's crayon useful. These wax "filler sticks" or "crayons" come in a wide range of wood colors and can be purchased individually or in sets with a range of color. All you do is warm the wax in your hand to soften it a bit and apply to the crack and then rub away the excess. Fine furniture finishers use them to fill open joints and nicks and dings, as do gunsmiths on banged up gunstocks. They cost around three bucks apiece.
 

 
Color chart:  https://woodrepairproducts.com/product/fil-stiks/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAwf39BRCCARIsALXWETxVSo6lB0Guzfus1DrsLNcS6EnG11mDoXB0vhFS4_SFn8DkaBctn1kaAvsZEALw_wcB