Polacca by Slowhand - Scale 1:32 - 18th century ship of Venetian Fleet

[Slowhand]

I finally decided to start my first scratch build project after lots and lots of deliberation, I didn’t want something too complex/ ambitious so the starting point was the Amati plans of a kit which is quite small hence the scaling up from 1:50 to 1:25. The Polacca was used by Venetian Fleet to protect the shipping routes of Venice from the Dalmatian, Greek and Turkish Pirates. That lateen sail at the front must have been useful for sailing to windward and perhaps downwind as a primitive gennaker or spinnaker!  Expect I’ve a lot to learn but guess I’ll have plenty of time with this Corona virus thing. My version will be over 24” not including the bowsprit so the original would be about 50’ which looks about right. Intend to open up the rear cabin for lights and put a lower deck midships partly visible through the grating. 

[Slowhand]

First steps scaling up the plans before copying across onto the plywood. No expense spared here mind, this 5mm 3 ply from B&Q a few months ago cost all of £ 3/4. 
Did a dummy run with a coping saw but as it happened got much better results with my Scheppach bandsaw which I finally seemed to have mastered. The dummy keel was laid on the 11th May. The mouse police looked typically distainful.

[Tony Hunt]

Looking good!  Interesting choice of ship too.

[Slowhand]

Thanks Tony, the hardest part of cutting the bulkheads was getting the slots which fit into the false keel perpendicular,  had to redo one bulkhead. Bandsaw blade had a tendency to wander.
 

Because of the length of the hull and relatively few bulkheads decided to infill the spaces with blocks to give strength and stop the keel warping. 
 

Pine 6 x 4“ left over from a raised garden bed cut into lengths with a bow saw then shaped with the bandsaw. Everything’s just loose at this stage. Cut out the stem to replace with some nice wood. Any similarity with Backer’s  wonderful build of the Golden Hind merely coincidental.

 

Edited May 14, 2020 by Slowhand
Typo

[Slowhand]

Everything glued together and rough sanding done using my sanding pad /grinder. 
 

Can’t risk doing anymore using this tool so it’s slow and careful by hand now.

[Slowhand]

Lots of sanding by hand the fill ins and tapering adjusting bulkheads,  still to add final in fills at stern. 
Loosely  pinned a stringer to check curve of hull. Then noted rear part of false keel had warped so added to two wedges either side between bulkhead and keel. Fingers crossed.

 

Added two blocks of lime and carved sanded them to fill in between last bulkhead and  stern 

[Slowhand]

Quite pleased with what I’ve done so far got a solid base for the hull, straight keel and in fill blocks in profile with bulkheads. 
 

Decision point, spent ~ £5 on ply, pine infill blocks nil, only cost so far Is my time. If I’d made a dogs dinner would have cut my losses. Happy to go ahead and buy lime strips for  Wales, 1st planking layer, and pear or cherry for stem, keel and stern post. Now for the fun laying the decks, planking the hull.
 

 

[Louie da fly]

Hi Slowhand. Looking good. You might find Cristiano's polacre buildlog helpful as a reference - https://modelshipworld.com/topic/7290-venetian-polacre-by-cristiano-finished-xviii-century-from-original-drawings/

 

Steven

 

[Slowhand]

Thanks Steven, Lots of interesting details in the build,  the shape of the hull in the link looks quite different to plans I have, much fuller with cannon ports all along the main deck. The link to the Jean Jouve Polacre in Christiano’s build shows that vessel is more akin to the one I’am making.
 

 

[Slowhand]

Long awaited wood arrived, pear for stem, keel and stern post. Lime, beech for planking etc. The plan was to cut the pieces with my bandsaw, Just don’t know whats wrong With it. The rubber tyre flew off the upper wheel twice despite checking position and tension of the blade very carefully before running. So it’s back to manual work, my trusty Stanley knife and Hacksaw gave by far the best cleanest cuts. What does everyone else use, table saws.

 

Used gouges to carve a bearding line in the stem. Pinned the wales in place to check curves. Bulkhead 4 on far right needs building up other  than that OK, oh and the bow blocks might need more sanding - that’s been the hardest part so far and still not quite right.
 

 

[Slowhand]

Stern transom fixed and first two bits of lime attached to start planking and confirming where the decks lie. Planking 2 x 6 mm lime as first layer. With distance between bulkheads gonna need the strength of two layers. Really having to think where decks, stern balcony’s go . So different to building from a kit.

[Slowhand]

Well I’ve been starting to put cross members on the bulkheads to lay the decks on and starting to get a little confused. The main deck was obvious and once I realised the bulwarks should go past the 2 upper decks everything looked clearer. The single plank in my previous posting above was removed and replaced by a longer one nearly reaching the next left bulkhead. But the height between the decks looked all wrong for the scale much too low.

 

So I looked at the Amati plan and the heights marked A and B in yellow for between decks are approx 2cm and 3cm so on a 50:1 plan 1 and 1.5 m high. The overall length of the ship not including bowsprit based on the 50:1 plan is ~ 20m which doesn’t sound too unreasonable. 
 

Any advice much welcome,  is it likely the Amati scale is wrong?

[Sceatha]

Hello Slowhand, 

 

1m seems a bit odd indeed. Is the scale printed on the plans? I have seen that the Amati kit has 1/150 printed as scale. 

 

Which of course would give a distance of 3m between deck, which is also weird. 

 

A lot of the Amati plans are at 1/64. This which would give a height of about 1.3m between decks, which could be considered low but plausible. 

[Slowhand]

Hello Sceatha, you know I think you right. When I purchased the plans they were definitely advertised as 50/1 and it says so on the building instructions but not on the main plan, part of which I’ve shown above. Perhaps they missed a 1 out. Looks like they’ve relaunched the packaging. Wonder if they spotted my build log and thought the scale on my build log is all wrong,  fame of a kind at last! First thing to do tomorrow is to take some measurements on the plan and calculate actual sizes with different scales. A 150/1  scale would make it quite a long ship. Anyway thanks for your help. 😊

[Slowhand]

Did some quick calculations, cannot be 150/1 scale that would be a large vessel 45 metres, and the cabin / deck heights way  too high. A 50/1 scale the cabin deck heights way too low. 100/1 still gives quite a long ship deck heights bit too high.
 

Looks to a scale 75/1 or 64/1 is feasible what does anyone think?

[Sceatha]

Interesting.

 

1/150 is quite unnaturally large indeed.

My vote goes to 1/64. The numbers are the most plausible I think, and it is a scale regularly used by Amati.

 

Maybe the length of the ship's boat could give some clues?

[Slowhand]

Afraid it doesn’t show a ships boat, nice idea mind

[Slowhand]

In the absence of any other evidence it’s 64/1 so my build log is 32/1.

[Slowhand]

Surprisingly difficult to produce two identical pieces for the bottom of stern windows still got there. Some work to do on those top planks curvature not right.

[Slowhand]

After a bit of experimentation with bending planks to get the curvature in the bulwarks. It’s not going to work so a re think. The bulkhead spacing restricts me to using long planks which I won’t bend across theIr width. 
 

Has any one got any suggestions. My thoughts are using ply side panels as in many kits and planking over them. This scratch building throws up a few difficulties not least finding the right tools to cut out pieces accurately. I’am using hand tools now but it never feels very satisfying as the accuracy is not there with the first cut. A coping or scroll saw creates so much dust it obscures the line so my preferred weapon is a small hacksaw really for metal work but it works so what the heck.

[Slowhand]

Forgot to add how do I change my topic title as I need to change the scale from 25 to 32/1.

[mtaylor]

I changed your topic title scale for you.   If you need to change anything on the title, just go to the very first post and hit "edit".

 

As for the planking problem, if I understand this, you want to basically fill the areas between the bulkheads above the area you have filled, right?  I've used basswood (lime) and also balsa for filling.  I have found though that the lime works better.

[Louie da fly]

Looking good, Slowhand. She has very nice graceful lines.

[Chapman]

On 7/9/2020 at 12:30 AM, Slowhand said:

Well I’ve been starting to put cross members on the bulkheads to lay the decks on and starting to get a little confused. The main deck was obvious and once I realised the bulwarks should go past the 2 upper decks everything looked clearer. The single plank in my previous posting above was removed and replaced by a longer one nearly reaching the next left bulkhead. But the height between the decks looked all wrong for the scale much too low.

 

So I looked at the Amati plan and the heights marked A and B in yellow for between decks are approx 2cm and 3cm so on a 50:1 plan 1 and 1.5 m high. The overall length of the ship not including bowsprit based on the 50:1 plan is ~ 20m which doesn’t sound too unreasonable. 
 

Any advice much welcome,  is it likely the Amati scale is wrong?

I think the kit is inspired by the model construction from Casa Reyna.
This plan is given as a 1: 150 scale and shows a Spanish ship named Carmen. The real scale of this plan is more like 1/90.

[Slowhand]

Thanks for your Interest Mark, the area below the two upper most planks In my last photo also to the left of A on the Amati diagram (the stern cabin) was intended to be “open plan“ and I still have the bulwarks on the rear deck to the right of B to consider so in this case I don’t think solid filler blocks of lime would work in this case. Or did you mean blocks of lime say 10mm thick which could well work for the lower part A.

[mtaylor]

I was thinking thin (10mm sounds good) with each end glued to a bulkhead.  You can stack them up as high as you want to fill the open area.

[Sceatha]

You could make a temporary solid Hull. Insert big blocks of wood, like you did for the underside, but do not glue them. Just screw them in place with long wood screws to the existing blocks. Then sand them to shape. 

You can then do a double planking, so that it holds the shape and then unscrew and remove the extra blocks. 

Just make sure you either wax or add some membrane to the extra blocks so the planking does not stick on them. 

[Slowhand]

So far so good added 10mm thick lime in-fills with wood left over from a carving project. Will in fill to just below the deck line. Easy fills done,  now for the harder in-fills.

 

Not sure if a I’ll use the ply bulkheads clipped on but helps me visualise the overall ship.

[bruce d]

Hello Slowhand, just looked properly at your log for the first time. A very interesting subject and the way you are keeping your cool while navigating the what-scale-is-it-today game is admirable.

I will follow along if you don't mind?

 

BTW, my Scheppach bandsaw only had one weak spot: the tyre wear which never made sense. The UK after-sales support was always first class. I have now upgraded to a Metabo BAS261 simply because I needed to do some bigger stuff.

 

[Slowhand]

Thanks Bruce, I used my bandsaw today with a new blade 1/4” and 4 tpi cut quite straight although it was a bit of a beast and not exactly a precision tool. First time the rubber tyre came off just about straight away so I superglued it back on. More sanding work on the in fills so nothing worth photographing today.