M.R.Field

Oh, Gawd knows. I don't do pootahs beyond simple internet and image searches. I think it's sorted out now. Martin

Dan, thanks for the link. I shall be going through that lot later.I wonder why so many opt for the HMS style of boat/ship when over on Gaff Rig International, people rave in great numbers about the simple elegance of a Galway Hooker or a Falmouth Quay Punt, a Leigh Peter Boat or a Tollesbury Smack. Or how about the unusual, almost odd nature of a Norfolk wherry, a Shetland Sixareen or a North Eastern Coble? So much variety, so much interesting specialisation and local design and build practices. Lines drawings in Edgar March's books, photos everywhere. Jutta thought, Eccles, as the Goons would have said. Martin PS, this post didn't appear, but came back to my e-mail account as a "Mailer Daemon"!! How could that happen?

vossiewulf, You have a point there. I tend to have a look at what's new and if I see "HMS" or anything earlier than 19th century orei, I pass it over. I guess as I am very narrow in my tastes, why shouldn't others be? I have no idea how to link my build log in my signature, though. I am often in admiration of others' skills, but never jealous. Envious, maybe of their equipment, but then, I have some pretty tasty stuff myself! And nothing to do with model boats. I could sell that off and buy a Byrnes saw, now that I have no old cars, but I like playing with my English wheel and it's very useful for levelling distorted metal sheet. I' have worked as a professional modelmaker for many years, from brass masters of 1/200th scale aircraft for the RAF to full sized clay models for most of Europe's car industry, so have a healthy skill set, learned the hard way and through books. I subscribed to Model Shipwright for many years and learned a great deal from there. I wonder what I did with all those. Today, at a little village boot fair I found a set of wooden slats from Venetian blinds, which are about 3/32" thick in a lovely light coloured close grained wood. I can probably get all my deck planks for both Vanity and Bloodhound from these. How much did this treasure cost me? 50 pence! The insides of Vanity are now epoxy coated and I'll be planing down and filling the outside prior to epoxy and cloth. THEN I can start on the deck. Cheers, Martin

Michael, the whole interior was like it. It had been simplified a bit, so the master's cabin had become part of the galley, but the son's cabin and the lady cabin were still there. Under the lady cabin berth was a long drawer and hand written on the base were the words "Bosun's papers". It was a sea of maple and mahogany. Martin

Oh! be still my beating heart! Keith, yes you "also have one", but ye Gods, what an absolute beauty. That would be on my window cill or in my showcase. Yours is so complete too. Mine has nothing else apart from what you see on my picture. And the bed is very short, about 4". There's a knurled knob at the back which moves, but doesn't want to come right off. I think I'll just clean it and display it. Making it do service as a serving machine would entail mods that I wouldn't want to make. Whereas I could easily make a new serving machine. Many thanks for your help with this. I'm now off to look at your links. Cheers, Martin

Nils, that is a beauty. I'm glad you're a fan of the plank-on-edge cutters. There are only 2 left now Vanity has been abandoned. Partridge and Marigold. I have lines for Genesta and an interior layout drawing for Genesta in the book "Traditions and Memories of American Yachting", which has a lot of plans for English yachts as well as many for American "skimming dish" style vessels. I recommend that book for lovers of older yachts. Cheers, Martin

It occured to me I didn't put a picture of the old girl up when she was sailing. Here she is in Torquay harbour just prior to her trip across to America where she sailed the Eastern Seaboard, taking on (and often beating) America's Cup yachts. The owners knew each other. Cheers, Martin

Vossiewulf, I found an exactly similar one on ebay, but without the feet mine has. They also wanted £550 for it! I think it's early to mid 19Century, before the American pattern types. I'm beginning to think it would need too much modification to be a serving machine when they can be made very easily. Michael, nice to have your interest. I was reading your pilot cutter log the other day. Lovely work. My model is 48" long. 66 lbs of ballast? Jeez, I couldn't afford that much lead! I have only a couple of pics of Vanity when I lived aboard as I no longer have a scanner, I can only find the one, but here she is:- I have hosted dinner parties and Triumph Car Club committee meetings in that saloon! The problem was always getting guests to go home. My boss used to get in his dinghy in the marina the other side of the river after a half hour drive from the office and putter across with his Seagull outboard, just to allegedly wake me up if I'd decided not to go into work that day. He would then spend a couple of hours in the deckhouse taking it all in, drinking my tea and eating my toast. Then he'd say, "You know if I didn't have the big house and Maureen and the kids and the business, I'd live like this". Cheers, Martin

I have had this kicking around for ever. I believe it to be a form of watchmakers' lathe. I wonder if it might be a case maker's lathe as there is very little bed and a generous faceplate. It came with a basic watchmakers' lathe and a load of tiny watch parts in tins. But I kept this when I sold the lathe as it fascinated me. NOW...I'm thinking..."serving machine" Wouldn't it be nice to make an attachment to slowly turn it for me while I serve a bit of rope I've made on the machine in previous posts? Obviously this part would have to be the "head" of the machine and some sort of tail end made in which I could lock the rope. This machine is extremely early. It , despite the colour, is cast brass with a steel shaft. It turns as smoothly as oiled silk, so I will simply clean and lubricate it to start with Cheers, Martin

Chris, I was building this anyway and have been since last year, on and off. More off than on as other stuff calls on my time. I really don't give a toss if I'm popular or not! That, as I tell my grandchildren, is the most wonderful kind of freedom. I just thought such a boat might be of interest. It seemed not from the response. Views are often just people catching up and then clicking somewhere else. It's not an expression of real interest, but if, like you, there are other folks who can show an interest in something other than Navy Board style models, I'll continue to post progress. I've now smoothed out the deck shelf all round and will soon be adding the ply sub deck, but need to paint the interior with epoxy first. I'm building this because I used to live on her and subsequent owners have allowed her to fall apart. She has probably been destroyed now. My only way of remembering her is to catch her as a model. 1/16th scale is the biggest I can store. Come winter, I hunker down in a warm room and make scenic stuff, set-pieces, slot cars and, if I have time, 1/4" scale inshore craft. I of course admire the craftsmanship exhibited in most of the shall we say "typical" models. But something in me recoils at the idea of anything militaristic. My Dad didn't say much about his War, but enough for me never to go near it in any way. And anyway, there are so many of "my" kind of boat out there that deserve to be modelled to the same standard as most on here. I have a clinker dinghy, part modelled in the same scale, to be carried on board Vanity. That is, I hope, made to forum standards even if the hull of Vanity isn't, although her visible furnishings will be. That was just a way of saving time, something I need to consider these days. I'll keep it going a bit longer and see what interest we can muster for non Warships. Chidokan, I got the gears from ebay and was lucky, I guess, to get three the same. I had the Perspex as offcuts in a batch also from ebay. These days where I live there are no model shops or interesting shops selling materials and tools, so most of my purchases are from ebay. I always have so much to do that I don't consider mail order as waiting, as I used to. Cheers, Martin

Well, as I expected, my kind of boat isn't to anyone else's taste. That's fair enough,I suppose, but no replies and only 62 views isn't enough to keep taking pictures. Shame, as I quite fancied being part of this forum, but I really can't get interested in Warships of any age and so I guess I can't expect others to be interested in non military ships and boats. Cheers, Martin

Thanks E.J., for the kind welcome. Cheers, Martin

Thanks for the welcome, Mark. Martin

Here's the work done on the rope machine today, AFTER building a swing seat for my wife, which has been kicking around for a week or so. So, only about an hour today. Alas, being a hater of fishing all my life, I find I don't have a swivel in a drawer anywhere, so that'll have to be a trip into town for such a strange object as our village has lost its fishing shop in favour of a beauty parlour. I should add the latter is so much more needed than the former! Cheers, Martin

Here's the start of the rope machine. Why would anyone buy one when they have at least the skills to make the model on which the ropes will hang? Martin

I do hope I've titled this right. I can't toggle twixt typing here and checking the rules without losing this page completely, so if it ain't right, moderators, please correct the order. Well It's a model of the boat I used to live aboard in Burnham-on-Crouch in a line of similar-ish vessels, one of which, Ann Marie, a yawl, was successfully restored and went off chartering. Vanity, alas was moved to Bristol where I believe she has been destroyed for want of somebody with a piddling million to restore her. A few weeks of a footballer's salary would have secured her future, then the footballer could have been thrown away. SO....I figured it fell to me to make a decent model of her for posterity. Because I don't have huge amounts of time, despite being retired, I had to knock this thing up a bit sharpish. I found lines for Clara in Traditions and Memories of American Yachting, which has plenty of English yachts in with lines. I had the lines enlarged on a photocopier and transferred them to 3mm ply to make the bulkheads. Then cut them out on a bandsaw. A strong back style building board was made, the bulkheads glued to upstands representing a line above the vessel when upright, purely arbitrary. These upstands were then glued to square bars which were bolted to the strongback. The keel, which varies in width along the length of the boat (I should say the sided measurement) was drawn out to a plausible shape on the enlarged drawings and cut out of 3mm ply twice, as it would go from being stuck to the other one fore and aft, but have hardwood sandwiched in between along the middle portion of the vessel where the real one had 12 tons of lead. Once that was in place in slots pre-cut in the bulkheads, planking began. Now here I should say despite copious amounts of reading, I had never planked a model boat before, apart from a large clinker planked electric canoe model of a Peter Freebody craft that was done for a lady in Cincinatti. That was planked in veneer over a thin strip-planked hull which was completely lined, so no need to see the clinker inside. Also, I had given my son some old chairs my Granddad made in the 20s, but which had fallen to bits in modern central heating and asked him to rip them up into 2.5-3mm thick strips. These he did. I don't ave a full sized table saw. They ended up about an inch wide, so that's where I began. I cut the stem angle and bevelled that off behind then took it round to the sternpost, which was extremely raked being the rudder post effectively. The first 5 or 6 planks went on like that unfettled each side. Then as the bilge (such as it is on a plank-on-edge cutter) was rounded there came a need to shape them a bit here and there, but still not a huge amount. Only a few part-planks where I'd run out of full length planks and the final few each side up to the counter stern were awkward. The time came to take it off its building board. Bolts were removed and the upstands broken away. The amazing thing to me was how light it was! Even with some re-inforcement, it is stupidly light, which augers well for internal ballast only as the hull is very deep. It is now at the stage where I have glued in some deck supports and have to add supplementary deck beams to give the camber as I hadn't built that in. Weather has dictated that little has been done on the hull while I can't get the bandsaw outside, so I have made spars. I've used dowel as I didn't fancy the time it would take to do it by hand. But the surprisingly straight grained stuff from B%Q (yes really) still has to be tapered here and there. Mast and spar bands are made from strips of brass, bent round and silver soldered together or brass bar turned to fit with lugs soldered in to pre-drilled holes. For a complete change I started the after decklight. That was made in more Cuban Mahogany strip as the colour was gorgeous and the finish possible was hard and smooth. Here I should say that apart from using a small plane on the hull, I use metalworking tools almost universally on the quality woods I like. I cut using a jeweller's piercing saw against the metal vice jaws and clean up with Swiss files. I rarely use a knife and only for bigger jobs, a chisel. Even then that's likely to be a reground and honed Swiss file. I don't possess a razor saw. I tried one once, it stuck, I threw it away. Perhaps a life time of making brass patterns for the model industry has given me this preference. The casing has dovetailed corner joints and the lids have mortice and tenon joints, so that the whole thing effectively held itself together before gluing! Well, that's enough waffle. Please don't judge the hull too badly. It will be finished to a gloss black by the time I've filled and planed and epoxy coated it. The gaff jaws are made of Steamed Pear, a favourite timber of mine, fixed to flats on the spar, then drilled and pinned with brass rod. Currently this weekend I'm making a ropemaking machine from Perspex offcuts. I bought a random set of cheap nylon gears off ebay in order to make my own design of sail winches and I found just enough to make the ropewalk. It will be hand wound as I believe a man should suffer for his art<G> Cheers, Martin

I should have said....if you can take something of a Maverick, then I'll stick around. I worked as a professional modelmaker for years till I retired and still keep my hand in, so I might have strange ways, as Gentle Giant used to sing, so sweetly. Cheers, Martin

Thanks for the very nice welcome. As to a build log I don't know. I don't like to promise something then not deliver because I'm busy with other things which often happens. And as I said, I don't tend to do much on boats in the Winter, although my intention to make 1/4" scale inshore craft might change that as they won't be for use, just display I do have a Norfolk Wherry started and a model of our wooden canal boat, on which we lived for 5 years and cruised the British Midland canals. She was wooden right through, "but not as we know it, Jim" A wooden boat, massively built with a kelson, but no keel! Where we had to make our own water proofing from pitch, tar, horse poo and cow hair! Also, the hull is a bit of a mess as it was knocked up quickly and as it has to be black, like all good English yachts it will be epoxied, filled, etc. Not something to see. But I could do a log of all the other bits. I have an outdoor shed where the hull is and an indoor workshop where I do anything that takes my fancy, like the above decklights and the masts and spars. I made the gaff jaws and saddle last night, but must wait till I complete my minidrill stand before drilling them. I started making a ropemaking machine today, but have no way of drilling vertical holes......actually, it's just occurred to me.....I can drill them on the lathe against a pad in the tailstock! Haha, off we go then. Cheers, Martin

Thanks for the welcomes, folks. Here's a deck light made for the working model of Vanity. Dovetailed joints on the casing and mortice and tenon joint on the lids. Cuban Mahogany, 2 coats of cellulose sanding sealer, ready now for varnish. Cheers, Martin

I bet there are no forums for those! Martin

I think it must have been when this one merged with NRG. It certainly has fewer separate sections than the one I was thinking of and does seem to be the definitive serious ship model forum. Oh well, everything, it seems, changes, for good or bad or no apparent reason at all! Martin

Thanks for the welcome, Eddie. I may go quiet in the winter as I only do boats in the summer months in the, so far, feeble hope I'll get one afloat! But the truth is, I probably don't actually care if they float or not. In which case I have some very big boats hanging around! Martin

Thanks for the welcome....if that is relevant, as I may have been here before. Has the format changed in the last year or so? I'm in England David and I am a terrible tub thumper. I just can't do foreign stuff. OK, ships are not so bad as cars and railways and of course, mahogany speedboats are almost unheard of over here, except for imported ones. So it is indeed, to America and especially Canada that I turn for subject matter. But my liking for inshore craft is strictly Edgar March. I always fancied a round the coast collection of indigenous inshore craft in 1/4" scale. Cheers, Martin

Hello, I don't know if I'm a new member or not! I say that because I can't find the serious model ship building forum I used to belong to and don't recognise this one. The one I used to belong to had sections coveringsmall craft and a lot more than this one does. Would I be right in assuming this is a renewed version of that previous forum or is this a new one entirely and the old one has disappeared, like so much of a model ship nature on the 'Net.? My interests are entirely inshore craft, workboats and classic speedboats. I am not remotely interested in Militaria of any kind, so I won't last long here, but techniques are often interesting and informative. I am currently building a 1/16th scale model of my old Victorian Cutter, "Vanity" and after that will be fitting out an ancient GRP hull my friend gave me which we believe is of the Royal Yacht "Bloodhound". Martin