Bob Cleek

Oh yes, a "surface height gauge," as it seems to be called here on our side of the Pond, is a very handy thing to have, as your post has very well illustrated. In recent times, the simple "manual comparitor" models seems to have become less common. Most marketed now have the capacity to measure with a digital readout to a high level of tolerance and some even have provision for a cable connection for a CNC input. These guys cost two or three grand! The simple model you have is one of those things I'd love to snag at a garage sale, but I haven't seen one in a long time. Alternately, I use my dial indicator stand with a sharpened rod inserted in the hole for mounting the "clock" or I just take a suitably-sized block of wood and shim a sharp pencil on top of the block to the desired height and slap a piece of tape over it. Not what you'd call "highly accurate," but, as they say, "close enough for government work."
 
(Beautiful photos on your post, by the way! I'm sure a lot of the newer modelers will find your information very helpful! 
 
 
 
 

Oh yes, a "surface height gauge," as it seems to be called here on our side of the Pond, is a very handy thing to have, as your post has very well illustrated. In recent times, the simple "manual comparitor" models seems to have become less common. Most marketed now have the capacity to measure with a digital readout to a high level of tolerance and some even have provision for a cable connection for a CNC input. These guys cost two or three grand! The simple model you have is one of those things I'd love to snag at a garage sale, but I haven't seen one in a long time. Alternately, I use my dial indicator stand with a sharpened rod inserted in the hole for mounting the "clock" or I just take a suitably-sized block of wood and shim a sharp pencil on top of the block to the desired height and slap a piece of tape over it. Not what you'd call "highly accurate," but, as they say, "close enough for government work."
 
(Beautiful photos on your post, by the way! I'm sure a lot of the newer modelers will find your information very helpful! 
 
 
 
 

I consider safety protocols to be a matter of scale and commonsense. When I spend all day sanding the topsides of a yacht, I wear a common dust mask and if I'm spray painting one, I also wear a mask. (Were I spraying LPU, I'd be wearing a hazmat suit and a positive air supply system.) If I'm sanding a model I don't wear a mask at all. (I do relatively little sanding in model making without a vacuum hooked up to the sander.) If I'm spraying or airbrushing, I don't wear anything, but I always work in a well-ventilated space with a fan circulating the ambient air out a nearby window or open door. When modeling, the exposure to particulate pollution is so limited that I find it to be of little or no concern. This is not to suggest that safety protocols should be ignored, but only that there's no need to overdo it. Commonsense should be your guide. I've been doing this for over fifty years with no ill effects, but others' mileage may vary.
 

Bare wood, especially softer woods like basswood, should be sealed before applying any other coating and particularly so when using water-based coatings which will raise the grain of the wood. The easiest sealer to use on models is plain old clear (sometimes called "white") shellac thinned to around a "two pound cut," (Which is the consistency of 
Zinsser's "Bullseye" brand canned shellac.) This dries very quickly, won't raise the grain, and sands easily. (It will eliminate the "fuzzies" that occur when trying to sand soft woods.)  
 
If painting, for minor imperfections and filling pores, use any good "sanding primer." As mentioned, there are several major brands. Interlux is a high-quality marine paint line with which I am quite familiar but there are other sanding primers on the market. This sanding primer, "basecoat," or "sealer, depending upon the manufacturer's nomenclature, contains additives which make sanding easy. The additive can be anything from "whiting" (chalk or talcum) to microspheres. ("micro-balloons.") (If you have microballoons on hand for mixing epoxy fairing compound, you might want to experiment with adding them to regular paint or shellac and see if that works for you. Always test any coating system on scrap wood before applying to finished work to make sure it will provide the results sought.) 
 
I have found using water-based acrylics are not as suitable for fine finishes because the water can raise the grain and the softer synthetic coatings are more difficult to sand. If one is seeking a matte clear wood finish, I'd simply use clear shellac which will fill fairly well if applied in multiple coats. A thick shellac coating will end up glossy, but the gloss will easily sand off in the end to as fine a finish as one might require using fine sandpaper (300 grit or finer) and/or hand-rubbing with rottenstone and pumice.

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If you have some serious divots, surfacing putty is the necessary coating. It is a paste about the consistency of toothpaste that is thinned with acetone. It can be applied with a putty knife and can be thinned to a desired consistency. (It will harden in the can quickly if the lid is left off the can for appreciable periods. Adding a small amount of acetone to the can after use and storing the well-closed can upside down overnight will reconstitute the paste to a softer consistency without a lot of stirring. This material is sort of like drywall "mud." It hardens very quickly and can be sanded easily in a half hour or so. If a surfacing putty is used, the surfacing putty should be overcoated with the primer after it's been used. It's somewhat porous and if a gloss finish is applied directly over it, there is the tendency to create a 'flat spot" where the gloss topcoat was unevenly absorbed by the surfacing putty. 

 
 
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=interlux+surfacing+putty&adgrpid=1342504259915083&hvadid=83906731284955&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=43893&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-83906856471787%3Aloc-190&hydadcr=4123_13164389&tag=mh0b-20&ref=pd_sl_6qak90lgdy_e

Oh yes, a "surface height gauge," as it seems to be called here on our side of the Pond, is a very handy thing to have, as your post has very well illustrated. In recent times, the simple "manual comparitor" models seems to have become less common. Most marketed now have the capacity to measure with a digital readout to a high level of tolerance and some even have provision for a cable connection for a CNC input. These guys cost two or three grand! The simple model you have is one of those things I'd love to snag at a garage sale, but I haven't seen one in a long time. Alternately, I use my dial indicator stand with a sharpened rod inserted in the hole for mounting the "clock" or I just take a suitably-sized block of wood and shim a sharp pencil on top of the block to the desired height and slap a piece of tape over it. Not what you'd call "highly accurate," but, as they say, "close enough for government work."
 
(Beautiful photos on your post, by the way! I'm sure a lot of the newer modelers will find your information very helpful! 
 
 
 
 

Oh yes, a "surface height gauge," as it seems to be called here on our side of the Pond, is a very handy thing to have, as your post has very well illustrated. In recent times, the simple "manual comparitor" models seems to have become less common. Most marketed now have the capacity to measure with a digital readout to a high level of tolerance and some even have provision for a cable connection for a CNC input. These guys cost two or three grand! The simple model you have is one of those things I'd love to snag at a garage sale, but I haven't seen one in a long time. Alternately, I use my dial indicator stand with a sharpened rod inserted in the hole for mounting the "clock" or I just take a suitably-sized block of wood and shim a sharp pencil on top of the block to the desired height and slap a piece of tape over it. Not what you'd call "highly accurate," but, as they say, "close enough for government work."
 
(Beautiful photos on your post, by the way! I'm sure a lot of the newer modelers will find your information very helpful! 
 
 
 
 

Sanding sealer can still be found. I think it is clear dope with talcum powder (or something like that) mixed in.

Growing up a kid's bike ride from Gjoa when she sat in her dry berth at San Francisco's Ocean Beach in Golden Gate Park, as shown in the postcard above, and with a father who worked in the maritime industry as an accountant for Dollar Steamship and American President Lines, I was quite familiar with her and her history and never passed up a chance to check her out up close. Even in the mid-fifties, she was sadly neglected and pretty well stripped bare, although they did get around to building a cast iron fence around her. As you know, when she reached San Francisco, the local Norwegian community, which was strongly connected with the sea (and known locally on the waterfront as "squareheads,") acquired her and dragged her up on the beach. This was in late 1906 and the devastated San Francisco was in the midst of rebuilding after the Earthquake and Fire in April of 1906, so that was quite a remarkable feat in terms of economic priorities. At that time, the area was sparsely populated sand dunes running a few miles inland. There she sat ashore, facing the setting sun and the Pacific Ocean a few dozen yards from the breakers. That exposed location was hard on the wooden boat and she got little care, but it seems they threw a coat of paint on her every so often, at least. Money was short and, as time passed, Amundsen's accomplishment came to be underappreciated. I'm sure that her boats were gone in a flash. They certainly weren't around when I was a kid, although I read somewhere that after the War in 1949, the year I was born, they'd done some major work on her. They'd built an iron fence around her, but the high school kids used to jump the fence and climb aboard with a few six packs, break in, and party on her, at least until the cops got wise to it and started chasing them off! I was out of town when they hauled her off to Norway in the early seventies, so I missed watching them move her. I was glad she was brought home to where she and her crew would be more appreciated. It seems they've done a complete restoration on her, as she certainly deserved.
 
It looks like you have a good handle on modeling her. I look forward to following your scratch build!

Very nice model and a very appropriate setting for it!  Let's hope they get her in a case and out of that sunny window soon! (UV can fade paint and cause deterioration.) 
 
By the way, there isn't any type of membership charge for the Model Ship World forum. Welcome! Given the quality of the Fitzgerald  model, I'm sure a lot of people here would be interested in seeing photos of your brother's other models. He was obviously a very skilled craftsman.

Very nice model and a very appropriate setting for it!  Let's hope they get her in a case and out of that sunny window soon! (UV can fade paint and cause deterioration.) 
 
By the way, there isn't any type of membership charge for the Model Ship World forum. Welcome! Given the quality of the Fitzgerald  model, I'm sure a lot of people here would be interested in seeing photos of your brother's other models. He was obviously a very skilled craftsman.

Very nice model and a very appropriate setting for it!  Let's hope they get her in a case and out of that sunny window soon! (UV can fade paint and cause deterioration.) 
 
By the way, there isn't any type of membership charge for the Model Ship World forum. Welcome! Given the quality of the Fitzgerald  model, I'm sure a lot of people here would be interested in seeing photos of your brother's other models. He was obviously a very skilled craftsman.

Thanks Bob!  Nice to hear a personal story about this ship.  I've only seen her once-- in Oslo when she was still out in the weather and looking very rough. I was much more interested in her than the Fram, though the Fram can't disappoint. She's all fixed up and cozy inside now.
H-

The Sixth Day -
 
Front and Rear Seats -
Steps 51 - 55.  Great care was needed in removing the front and rear seats from the die-cut 1/16" basswood.  They seemed very fragile and like they could be broken or split easily.  The instructions called for marking the faux planks with a pencil following the lines shown on the plan.  For a realistic planking effect, I used the back of my Xacto knife blade and a straight edge to emboss the lines into the seats per the plan.  The notch in the rear seat had to be enlarged slightly to fit the stern beam.  When fitting the stern seat, it was quite a bit narrow for my hull.   I decided to glue a 1/16" thick strip of scrap on both the port and starboard edges of the rear seat to make it wide enough to sit on the riser and meet the ribs.  This also created a nice edge detail on the stern seat.  There was a similar issue with the bow seat.  I glued a scrap 1/32" strip to each side, which achieved the needed fit and added an interesting detail like the stern seat.  The seats were set aside for finishing before installation.
 
Seats and Knees -
Steps 57a - 58.  The seats were carefully measured and cut long to allow for fitting.  After fitting, I used the same technique as the front and rear seats to emboss two lines on each seat to give them a planked appearance.  The seats were set aside for finishing before installation.  Again, I deviated from the instructions for the knees and used the scrap material from the seats.  It seemed far easier and more precise to rip the 3/4" to about 5/8" and then cut 1/2" high triangles than attempting to cut them from the die-cut scrap.  After the six triangles were cut, I wrapped sandpaper around a 1/2" diameter tube to sand the curve in the middle of each knee. Then I shaped the ends with a sanding strip.  They were test fit and then set aside for finishing before installation.
 
Finishing Seats, Knees, and Hull Exterior -
The front, rear, and bench seats were all finished with two applications of Artesania Latina Walnut dye (No. 91).  The walnut rub rail strips were also finished with one application of this same dye.  The knees were all finished with the same Artesania Latina Semi-gloss Oak Varnish-dye (No. 06) used for the hull interior.  The hull exterior was primed with Artesania Latina White Primer Filler (No. 01).  After drying, it was sanded with 400 grit, and a second coat was applied.  

Seat and Knee Installation - 
Steps 55, 57b, 59 - 61.  Once the finished parts were dry, any glue points were sanded.  The stern seat was installed and glued with PVA along the transom, each rib, and at the end of the riser rail.  The bow seat was then installed and glued with PVA at the stem, ribs, and forward end of the riser rails.  Each of the knees was fit, and each needed additional sanding and shaping to conform to the hull and the seat.  They were glued in place with PVA.
 
With the seats installed and finished, thus ended the sixth day...
 
 

 

Growing up a kid's bike ride from Gjoa when she sat in her dry berth at San Francisco's Ocean Beach in Golden Gate Park, as shown in the postcard above, and with a father who worked in the maritime industry as an accountant for Dollar Steamship and American President Lines, I was quite familiar with her and her history and never passed up a chance to check her out up close. Even in the mid-fifties, she was sadly neglected and pretty well stripped bare, although they did get around to building a cast iron fence around her. As you know, when she reached San Francisco, the local Norwegian community, which was strongly connected with the sea (and known locally on the waterfront as "squareheads,") acquired her and dragged her up on the beach. This was in late 1906 and the devastated San Francisco was in the midst of rebuilding after the Earthquake and Fire in April of 1906, so that was quite a remarkable feat in terms of economic priorities. At that time, the area was sparsely populated sand dunes running a few miles inland. There she sat ashore, facing the setting sun and the Pacific Ocean a few dozen yards from the breakers. That exposed location was hard on the wooden boat and she got little care, but it seems they threw a coat of paint on her every so often, at least. Money was short and, as time passed, Amundsen's accomplishment came to be underappreciated. I'm sure that her boats were gone in a flash. They certainly weren't around when I was a kid, although I read somewhere that after the War in 1949, the year I was born, they'd done some major work on her. They'd built an iron fence around her, but the high school kids used to jump the fence and climb aboard with a few six packs, break in, and party on her, at least until the cops got wise to it and started chasing them off! I was out of town when they hauled her off to Norway in the early seventies, so I missed watching them move her. I was glad she was brought home to where she and her crew would be more appreciated. It seems they've done a complete restoration on her, as she certainly deserved.
 
It looks like you have a good handle on modeling her. I look forward to following your scratch build!

Traditional scale model ship building using traditional materials, primarily wood, scale rigging cordage, and non-ferrous metal fittings is an artistic discipline in and of itself which goes back at least as far as the Pharaohs. Those traditional materials have archival qualities that enable them to last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Few of us will ever build a model that will survive that long, but as a goal, it's something to strive for. Styrene and most other plastics, on the other hand, often deteriorate in a matter of decades, at best.  Building a plastic kit model yields a model that will be virtually identical to how many others there are in the same production run, save for the painting and weathering skills of the modeler. A scratch-built model is unique and can be the only model ever built of a particular vessel, thereby having the potential to be valued as a three-dimensional historical record of that particular vessel. Many find particular satisfaction in scratch-building for that reason. If one enjoys building models of any material or type they should pursue that hobby as long as it entertains them. It's really a matter of taste that dictates how any ship modeler choses to pursue the hobby.

While curves can be cut on a bandsaw, of course, I do think a good scroll saw is a much more versatile sawing tool for fine work such as is encountered in modeling. A scroll saw will permit you to stop the forward progress of a cut, rotate the workpiece without limitation, and start off in another direction without ever having to turn the saw off.  Similarly, a scroll saw can cut a circle or any other shape inside the perimeter of a workpiece which is simply not possible with a bandsaw. The scroll saw will also accept a far wider variety of cutting blades including omnidirectional ones which, again, are simply not possible with a bandsaw. If you do decide on a bandsaw, and you have the room in your shop, you'd do well to get a standard Delta 14" bandsaw or one of the many Asian clones (I'm sure any patents expired ages ago.) (Jet and Grizzly are reliable retailers of these and there are many available on the used market.) 
 
Buyers have to be careful buying scroll saws. There is a very wide range of price and corresponding quality in scroll saws and you definitely get what you pay for. One should do a fair amount of online research before "pulling the pin" to avoid disappointment and a waste of money. (Small "mini scroll saws" sold in most of the ship modeling catalogs, e.g. Dremel, Proxxon, and MicroMark, are generally underpowered and overpriced in my opinion.) Scroll saws are a "gateway" power tool with a wide market base of hobbyists. A lot of them are bought by entry level hobbyists who later find themselves no longer interested in their hobby and little-used scroll saws can be found on the used market quite easily. This is great if you find one of the $750 to $2,000 top of the line scroll saws for $100, and not so great if you pay $100 for a scroll saw that was junk the day it rolled off the assembly line. At the bottom of the heap in the "big box" stores, Wen and DeWalt "swing arm" models in the $150 to $300 range often get reasonably good reviews but they are not even in the same zip code with the "parallel arm" models made by Hegner, Sakura, Excalibur, and King Industrial. The major price difference is between "swing arm" and "parallel link arm" scroll saws. The latter move the blade in an up and down motion perpendicular to the table (if the table is set flat) while the former "swing" the blade in an arc when sawing. The primary quality distinctions in scroll saws are 1. Type of arm, swing or parallel link, 2. motor power, and perhaps most importantly, 3. lack of vibration, all of which are directly related to the accuracy the saw is capable of delivering. At the inexpensive end of the scale are tools which vibrate so much, even when bolted down to a solid surface, that they are near useless for doing fine work. 
 
This isn't to say that one has to spend $750 and up to acquire a decent scroll saw. Even if one "pays retail" for a new saw, good work can be done with DeWalt's parallel link arm 20" scroll saw. DEWALT Scroll Saw, Variable-Speed, 1.3 Amp (DW788), Yellow, 20-Inch - Power Table Saws - Amazon.com
 
It really isn't an "either or" question. If you want to cut pieces for built-up hull framing, a good scroll saw is the tool for the job. If you want to resaw billets for model work, a bandsaw is the tool for the job. You can use a bandsaw with a narrow blade to roughly cut curves within the limits of your blade's width and then "sand to the line," to achieve a sufficiently accurate result, but that's not really what the bandsaw is made for. You can also us a scroll saw to cut thick billets within the limits of its throat opening, but that's not what it's made for, either, and you'll probably break a lot of blades trying. 
 
So, as Mr. Natural says,
 

 

While curves can be cut on a bandsaw, of course, I do think a good scroll saw is a much more versatile sawing tool for fine work such as is encountered in modeling. A scroll saw will permit you to stop the forward progress of a cut, rotate the workpiece without limitation, and start off in another direction without ever having to turn the saw off.  Similarly, a scroll saw can cut a circle or any other shape inside the perimeter of a workpiece which is simply not possible with a bandsaw. The scroll saw will also accept a far wider variety of cutting blades including omnidirectional ones which, again, are simply not possible with a bandsaw. If you do decide on a bandsaw, and you have the room in your shop, you'd do well to get a standard Delta 14" bandsaw or one of the many Asian clones (I'm sure any patents expired ages ago.) (Jet and Grizzly are reliable retailers of these and there are many available on the used market.) 
 
Buyers have to be careful buying scroll saws. There is a very wide range of price and corresponding quality in scroll saws and you definitely get what you pay for. One should do a fair amount of online research before "pulling the pin" to avoid disappointment and a waste of money. (Small "mini scroll saws" sold in most of the ship modeling catalogs, e.g. Dremel, Proxxon, and MicroMark, are generally underpowered and overpriced in my opinion.) Scroll saws are a "gateway" power tool with a wide market base of hobbyists. A lot of them are bought by entry level hobbyists who later find themselves no longer interested in their hobby and little-used scroll saws can be found on the used market quite easily. This is great if you find one of the $750 to $2,000 top of the line scroll saws for $100, and not so great if you pay $100 for a scroll saw that was junk the day it rolled off the assembly line. At the bottom of the heap in the "big box" stores, Wen and DeWalt "swing arm" models in the $150 to $300 range often get reasonably good reviews but they are not even in the same zip code with the "parallel arm" models made by Hegner, Sakura, Excalibur, and King Industrial. The major price difference is between "swing arm" and "parallel link arm" scroll saws. The latter move the blade in an up and down motion perpendicular to the table (if the table is set flat) while the former "swing" the blade in an arc when sawing. The primary quality distinctions in scroll saws are 1. Type of arm, swing or parallel link, 2. motor power, and perhaps most importantly, 3. lack of vibration, all of which are directly related to the accuracy the saw is capable of delivering. At the inexpensive end of the scale are tools which vibrate so much, even when bolted down to a solid surface, that they are near useless for doing fine work. 
 
This isn't to say that one has to spend $750 and up to acquire a decent scroll saw. Even if one "pays retail" for a new saw, good work can be done with DeWalt's parallel link arm 20" scroll saw. DEWALT Scroll Saw, Variable-Speed, 1.3 Amp (DW788), Yellow, 20-Inch - Power Table Saws - Amazon.com
 
It really isn't an "either or" question. If you want to cut pieces for built-up hull framing, a good scroll saw is the tool for the job. If you want to resaw billets for model work, a bandsaw is the tool for the job. You can use a bandsaw with a narrow blade to roughly cut curves within the limits of your blade's width and then "sand to the line," to achieve a sufficiently accurate result, but that's not really what the bandsaw is made for. You can also us a scroll saw to cut thick billets within the limits of its throat opening, but that's not what it's made for, either, and you'll probably break a lot of blades trying. 
 
So, as Mr. Natural says,
 

 

I consider safety protocols to be a matter of scale and commonsense. When I spend all day sanding the topsides of a yacht, I wear a common dust mask and if I'm spray painting one, I also wear a mask. (Were I spraying LPU, I'd be wearing a hazmat suit and a positive air supply system.) If I'm sanding a model I don't wear a mask at all. (I do relatively little sanding in model making without a vacuum hooked up to the sander.) If I'm spraying or airbrushing, I don't wear anything, but I always work in a well-ventilated space with a fan circulating the ambient air out a nearby window or open door. When modeling, the exposure to particulate pollution is so limited that I find it to be of little or no concern. This is not to suggest that safety protocols should be ignored, but only that there's no need to overdo it. Commonsense should be your guide. I've been doing this for over fifty years with no ill effects, but others' mileage may vary.
 

Traditional scale model ship building using traditional materials, primarily wood, scale rigging cordage, and non-ferrous metal fittings is an artistic discipline in and of itself which goes back at least as far as the Pharaohs. Those traditional materials have archival qualities that enable them to last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Few of us will ever build a model that will survive that long, but as a goal, it's something to strive for. Styrene and most other plastics, on the other hand, often deteriorate in a matter of decades, at best.  Building a plastic kit model yields a model that will be virtually identical to how many others there are in the same production run, save for the painting and weathering skills of the modeler. A scratch-built model is unique and can be the only model ever built of a particular vessel, thereby having the potential to be valued as a three-dimensional historical record of that particular vessel. Many find particular satisfaction in scratch-building for that reason. If one enjoys building models of any material or type they should pursue that hobby as long as it entertains them. It's really a matter of taste that dictates how any ship modeler choses to pursue the hobby.

Traditional scale model ship building using traditional materials, primarily wood, scale rigging cordage, and non-ferrous metal fittings is an artistic discipline in and of itself which goes back at least as far as the Pharaohs. Those traditional materials have archival qualities that enable them to last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Few of us will ever build a model that will survive that long, but as a goal, it's something to strive for. Styrene and most other plastics, on the other hand, often deteriorate in a matter of decades, at best.  Building a plastic kit model yields a model that will be virtually identical to how many others there are in the same production run, save for the painting and weathering skills of the modeler. A scratch-built model is unique and can be the only model ever built of a particular vessel, thereby having the potential to be valued as a three-dimensional historical record of that particular vessel. Many find particular satisfaction in scratch-building for that reason. If one enjoys building models of any material or type they should pursue that hobby as long as it entertains them. It's really a matter of taste that dictates how any ship modeler choses to pursue the hobby.

Traditional scale model ship building using traditional materials, primarily wood, scale rigging cordage, and non-ferrous metal fittings is an artistic discipline in and of itself which goes back at least as far as the Pharaohs. Those traditional materials have archival qualities that enable them to last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Few of us will ever build a model that will survive that long, but as a goal, it's something to strive for. Styrene and most other plastics, on the other hand, often deteriorate in a matter of decades, at best.  Building a plastic kit model yields a model that will be virtually identical to how many others there are in the same production run, save for the painting and weathering skills of the modeler. A scratch-built model is unique and can be the only model ever built of a particular vessel, thereby having the potential to be valued as a three-dimensional historical record of that particular vessel. Many find particular satisfaction in scratch-building for that reason. If one enjoys building models of any material or type they should pursue that hobby as long as it entertains them. It's really a matter of taste that dictates how any ship modeler choses to pursue the hobby.

Somebody probably has a more authoritative answer from a book somewhere, but I'd guess that they would attach the block on the horse with a shackle or a moused hook and remove the block when the mainsheet wasn't attached to the horse. (I'm not sure when shackles came into use, actually.) The shrouds would be attached to the chainplates similarly, with a shackle or moused hook on the bottom of the lower deadeye. This would permit the deadeye lanyards being loosened and the deadeyes and lanyards removed from the chainplates with the mast as a unit. The shrouds and deadeyes and lanyards, as well as halyards and stays, would likely have been lashed to the mast when it was stepped, and then the entire mast and gang of rigging removed with a tackle while the longboat was alongside. I doubt they'd have gone to the trouble to reeve the mainsheet tackle and deadeyes, although they may have stowed some of it below if they were "off soundings" for a long while and not anticipating sailing the longboat for weeks at a time.
 
The spars and rigging would likely have been stowed lashed on the boat skids or spar rack of the ship. The mast is likely too heavy and unwieldy to step from within the longboat and there isn't any "tabernacle" arrangement that I expect would have been present (as in American whaleboats) if it were ever intended to be stepped from the longboat. Then again, some of the evolutions that were performed by the naval crews of that time were pretty amazing. For the size of the vessels, they carried large crews and many hands make light work. The amount of heavy work that was performed, such as stowing furniture and removing cabin bulkheads throughout the ship, when the crew was "beat to quarters" to go into combat was truly prodigious.

It's been niggling at me for days now and I think I've found the answer. I think the horse below the tiller makes perfect sense, Chuck.
 
Everything on a vessel is for a purpose and on most vessels, particularly naval vessels, things are pretty well worked out.
 
A longboat is primarily a pulling boat. It's usually used for short trips to shore when anchored out, between vessels in a squadron,  between ships at sea, or for sending armed parties ashore. Speed and maneuverability would usually be of the essence. There is no shortage of manpower on board the mother ship, so there's no problem manning the oars. By far, the most use she'd see would be propelled by oars. That would provide reliable speed and no problems with the wind being ahead of the beam.
 
The sailing rig, as handy as it may have proven to be to Captain Bligh and his mates, had to be a pain to have to rig and was likely rarely used. It would only be of advantage on longer journeys when nobody was in a hurry and then, primarily, when the wind was abaft the beam. If so, there would be even less occasion to tack and thus to see the mainsheet running into the tiller as it came across on the horse.
 
The tiller sets rather high. To install a horse above it would be complicated, as the horse has to be stable and the taller it is, the less ability it has to withstand the athwartships forces of the sheet block at the corners of the horse. The tiller is relatively short, which allows for the loose sheet tackle to perhaps be thrown around the tiller as the boom crosses amidships.
 
As primarily a rowing boat, a "hybrid" approach is also obviously available. Traveling long distances to windward, short tacking under sail can easily be avoided by leaving the sails to luff on the short leg with the oarsmen taking over, and then relieving the oarsmen on the long tack to let the wind do the work. That would permit rather rapid windward progress without having to pass the boom over at all when the helm was a-lee.
 
So, all in all, the horse below the tiller, while shocking to the eye of small boat sailors used to sail as the primary means of propulsion, and hence who do a lot of short tacking under sail, makes perfect sense on this particular boat.
 
So from now on, Chuck, any time somebody asks about the mainsheet horse, tell thelm I said it was right and right for good reasons!   

Sorry to have rubbed salt into the wound. I missed the first "few dozen times." As I mentioned, I expected that your version was faithful to the original contemporary model. I can accept that the "why" of it is now lost in the mists of time. As you said, "It's a model of a model."

Beautiful rigging job on the longboat in the gallery, Chuck! In its scale, the fine line and blocks certainly make a huge difference.
 
One question, however. I'm sure that you meticulously recreated the contemporary model upon which your longboat is based, but why would such a vessel have a mainsheet horse that is below the tiller? This requires the tiller to be unshipped from the rudder stock on every tack, at the time it is needed most, in order to permit the mainsheet tackle to slide over to the leeward wide.  Isn't a horse on the transom and crossing above the tiller, or a mainsheet rigged to blocks on the quarters instead of a horse, which don't cause the sheet tackle to foul on the tiller, be the proper arrangements?