Sailor1234567890

Wow, That's impressive. Looking forward to seeing more of this.

Go easy on the staining and dirt on the sails. A ship at sea has her white cloth sails out in the bleaching sun all day long. It's often easy to tell who has been at sea a while and who's been alongside by how white the sails are on the ship that's been at sea. The royal navy was often able to tell if the ship on the horizon was french by the fact that here sails hadn't been bleached by the sun. Your ship looks magnificent though. The more I look at these projects you people are working on, the more I'm inclined to say that I haven't the patience for it, I should stick with 1:1 scale…...

Beautiful.

Interesting that they wouldn't address this in the kit.

Motors? This unloading system won't have functioning parts will it?

I look forward to seeing that cross section. I am in awe over your build so far.

Looks like a fun project though. Enjoy it.

You can also very easily see that garboard strake is very much triangular in shape, just as I mentioned in my last post here. It makes planking the hull up much easier. You can also see another facet of wooden ship/boat construction. The planking doesn't necessarily start at the bottom and work to the top or vice versa. You can start mid way and plank the hull in sections. In larger ships, this would allow several gangs of plankers to work at once. One gang might start at the top and work down, another at the bottom and work up. On particularly large ships, there may even be a third gang planking in the middle. They will meet part way and close up the last space with what is known as a "shutter plank". This was normally followed by a shutter plank party. Alcohol may be invovled. A modern builder prefers to use shutter planks everywhere so he builds by planking every second plank then putting "shutter planks" between each of the already installed planks. Sounds kind of odd to me but it works for him.

I was going to include the caveat that ships are not always built as the specifications call for but simply forgot as I composed the text. Lou is absolutely correct. We are lucky with this ship as we have her with us and can measure her to our heart's content. Thanks for clarifying Lou.

It would appear he does have the qualifications.

Lubbock's book Log of the Cutty Sark has the original build contract included at the back. I know the dimensions of just about every structural part are included in there. Here's a copy online of the contract. I emailed Mr. Sankey before Christmas. He must be very old by now but he responded very quickly to my enquiries. http://web.ncf.ca/bf250/willis.html Hope this helps everyone.

The crosshairs would not be visible from the lense up there. It would be painted on the lenses lower down in the periscope.

One of the reasons I love sailing so much is the self sufficiency aspect of it. The reason I like to build my own boats is that if I'm stuck somehwere, damage of some sort, I know that because I built the boat, I can fix anything on it. That, to me, adds to the self sufficiency aspect of sailing. I am seeing more and more on this site that model builders have the same "I can fix anything" attitude and I really like it. Good job on the repair, I can't see it either.

I know our shells have different identifying stripes painted on them. High explosive, fragmenting, dummy blanks etc. I'd presume that hers did as well. A bit of research would be in order I think.

The plank shape was dependant in a great part on what the builder had available at the time of construction. He would lay out his planks to make best use of the material on hand. I know of one famous shipwright (Larry Pardey) who planked his boat (Taleisen) starting with a triangular garboard. The garboard he used was made of the widest board he had. It was a (relatively) short board and only went part of the length of the keel. (Small vessel of 30 feet) and the first broad (plank next to the garboard) was also build like this. In begining his planking in this fashion, he was able to thin the remaining planks at the after end of the boat to use the narrower boards he had. Made planking the rest of the boat easier as well. All this to say that lining off (deciding how each plank will go) when done well can make planking the hull much easier and allow the builder to better use the wood available to him. If he were building two identical boats, they may not be planked identically because wood isn't all identical. Lining off is an art. If well done, the boat looks great and the job goes well. When poorly done, the lines show up clearly and it can look pretty bad. Lapstrake construction will accentuate the poorly lined off hull. Your hull looks great to me. Keep at it. I'm loving the progress on her.

The margin plank was not necessarily built of the same material as the deck. Decks were usually made of teak. That's no guarantee that Sherbourne's deck was teak but odds are. The margin plank served to add strength. It wasn't necessarily made of the same material as the deck. Often times it was of a thicker material than the deck. This provided extra strength. Strength was in issue in this area and the use of a stronger wood was often a way to provide that added strength required. Don't feel bad about the colour being different. Odds are it was different. It looks good, I'd continue with what you have. Keep it up. Looks great to me.

Would the sheaves have been blackened? I think it's a step that could safely be skipped. The sheave is a working part, the line passes over it all the time. It's constantly "polished" by the line passing over it. I think it would be perfectly acceptable to keep it shiny in there. Would add a little something to the model instead of just blackening it and making it disappear in the shadows.... Just a thought. Looking great and enjoying your progress.

Vivian, I don't know about 15th century latin vessels however I do know that lining up the deadeyes would be a point of pride in 19thC. Ships. They are set up then lined up and adjusted. It is a task that has to happen from time to time until the stretch is out of the shrouds. They way it was done was to bend one end of a handy billy (small protable block and tackle) to the end of the shroud and the other end part way up the shroud. Then by heaving on the purchase, you could tighten the shroud around the deadeye. Once it was adjusted to tension, the shroud was made fast such that the deadeye was lined up with the others in the gang of shrouds. Also, they used a sheer pole. I don't know if such a beast existed in the type of ship you are building but it served to help keep the deadeyes lined up as well as keeping them from twisting. Hope this helps. Great job you're doing there.

Sorry to hear that Nenad. Just keep your nose to the grindstone. You'll pull through.

Beautiful.

Simply amazing. I think I'd resort to a 3D printer for that kind of thing. Does a 3D printer even print to that level of detail?

That connection you refer to at the keel is where these discussions of "rabbet" and "Garboard strake" come in. The rabbet is the groove cut in the keel, stem and sternpost to accept the garboard strake (or the butt ends on the stem and hood ends on the sternpost). That part where Nenad says you have to cut of the corner of the plank so that the plank fits smoothly.... Well in a real construction you would not cut off the planking. I think he mentions having a thin plank and difficult to pin becuase it's so thin. That is exactly why you cut a rabbet. Instead of removing the material from the plank, you remove it from the keel or stem/stern posts. The plank should remain square. The garboard strake is the first plank up against the keel followed by what are called the first board and second board. Those are the next two planking strakes in the hull. Here is a link to a page that shows how odd the shape of the keel and garboard planks are. They mesh together perfectly though so that each can be bolted together and kept tight. http://njscuba.net/artifacts/obj_hull_steel.html Here is a site with a cross section of our lady's keel. http://hnsa.org/conf2004/papers/davies.htm Scroll down and you'll see a cross section of her keel. It's quite clear how the keel rabbet works once you look at the pictures. As for the stem and stern rabbets..... Here is a page from Duck trap. They've got a lot of good stuff. If you take a look at the information on this page, you'll see that the stem rabbet transisions into the keel rabbet then into the stern rabbet. It's one long groove running from the top of the stempost down the stem, along the keel and back up the sternpost. Along the keel, the plank rests along it's length in the rabbet. On the stem and sternpost, the plank ends (known as hood and butt ends) rest in the rabbet. http://www.duck-trap.com/building.html In really high quality ship construction, Cutty Sark included, the ends of each individual plank were capped with a metal cap before being installed. This kept water out of the endgrain of the plank. I can't imagine anyone modeling these caps though. I hope this little tidbit of information has helped you understand exactly what it is you're doing. One last book that may help out is this one: http://www.amazon.ca/Wooden-Ship-Building-Charles-Desmond/dp/0911572376 It should clear up all wood ship construction questions anyone may have.

It goes very well by the looks of things. Look forward to all the remaining updates on this build.

You have two books that are excellent for her. As Nenad said, get George F. Campbell's plans from the museum gift shop. They'll ship them to you. They aren't very expensive. You get detailed drawings of just about everything you could possibly want to know about the ship's external features and much of her internal as well. POB construction means her internals will not really be very important to you anyway. Her rig, decorations, layout etc is all in those three precious peices of paper. There's a drawing by Max Millar I think of her showing from her stbd quarter somehwat above her with cutaway views into the hold. It's a pretty good drawing as well though not as much detail can be gleaned from it as from the Campbell drawings. Lou mentioned some drawings from out his way, I have yet to see them or order them. I intend on it though before I start another CS. (I think I'm sick, I only want to build CS....) Try to find a copy of Basil Lubbock's Log of the Cutty Sark. It's one of the best books out there about the ship. It is filled with all sorts of details about her construction and her time at sea during her career until she ended up as a training ship on the Thames at the nautical college. Of course the internet is good for research as well. Plus post here. We'll all do our best to answer any questions you may have about her.

Ditto, beautiful work.