Boothbay 65 Schooner by allanyed - FINISHED

[allanyed]

Bristol Marine has designed a new schooner, a Boothbay Harbor 65 that is yet to be built.  They asked that I build a model which will be based on their detailed set of plans and their input on details as the build progresses.  The vessel is unusual in that it is specifically designed with handicap access and is planned to be used for day sailing trips.   They gave me permission to do a build log of the model and I will be starting the build shortly and hopefully will have updates on a regular basis.  For now, I am posting below, with their permission, a drawing of the 65.  Bristol Marine is the company which is restoring the Effie M. Morrisey (aka Ernestina).   This opportunity to build the model came up as the result of an introduction to Bristol Marine by a very kind member here at MSW.

Allan

 

 

[Jim Lad]

That's a very handsome looking schooner, Allan.

 

John

[allanyed]

Past few weeks spent drawing up the frames and keel using the plans from the naval architect that designed her.  The keel's design is unlike any I have seen before, having as much as an 8 inch radius on the bottom edges amidships and then reducing moving forward and aft.  The taper from midships forward and aft is quite severe compared to keels in days of old and has been quite a challenge in fabricating it.   The scale request is 1:24, so the  max width of the keel is 1.1" at scale.  I laminated two 3/4" pieces of poplar then ran it it through the planer on each side to the 1.1" dimension.  From there I marked out the tapers and planed and sanded to the correct dimensions.  Some finish sanding is still needed at this point.  The keel cross section shape at each frame is being checked with templates made using the body plan drawing which shows the shape very nicely.     There is a 20 foot section of the keel that is metal for ballast, but as the entire hull will be painted, there was no need to go casting this metal ballast piece.

 

 A false keel will be set on top of the keel and the frames glued in place on the false keel and keel.   The frames are hybrids of bulkheads and true frames.   A little of the inside of the hull will be viewable if the build goes as I have planned so full bulkheads did not seem like a good way to go.    

 

Photo of a couple of the frames are below as well as photos of the keel.  The false keel and frames are made from 0.21" thick birch plywood.    As a side note, when buying any lumber at a yard or home center. I am sure to check the actual thickness of any wood as it is not always as labelled.

 

Allan

Keel cross section template below

 

 

[Jond]

This build is going to be fun to watch.  Thank you for sharing.

 

jond

[mtaylor]

I'm pulling up a chair also.  Looks interesting.

[yvesvidal]

Fantastic project and such an elegant boat. The scale of 1/24 is a good choice as it will allow you to place some sailors on the deck (if they request it) and will compare favorably with other Yawls and Schooners at the same scale, on the market.

It should make up for a very impressive model, even bigger than the Amati Dorade.

 

I will be watching your work with passion. 

 

Yves

[allanyed]

If it does not go well Jon, it is your doing as you started the the whole process 😀😀

Seriously,  thank you very much for setting this whole thing up.

 

 

Thanks Mark!

 

Yves, the sailors may not be a bad idea, but better will be a wheel chair which I am looking for in this scale as the reason for this particular schooner design is to have access on board and below to the head by wheel chair.  It will be more evident as the build progresses.  I have found them in 1/12 scale but not 1/24 so far.

Allan

[allanyed]

And so the frame raising begins.....   I had a framing guide from another build that is on hold for now on my build board.  I left it on as it is sufficient to check that the frames/bulkheads on the Boothbay are square to the keel.  I use a square on each side of the frame to be sure the frames are perfectly vertical and square to the keel.   I made a small plumb bob that hangs so I can also check that the frames centered on the keel as well.   A quick check of the height of the top of each side of the frame is done to make sure it is not tilted athwartships.    First two frames needed no trimming to keep them square in all directions, but there are 22 more to go so that may very well change.   Couple more photos below.    Note that I use label paper when printing the frames.  I can then peel the backing and apply it to the wood without glue.   Much cleaner than gluing which can lead to stretching of the paper as well as bubbles of air under the paper and a mess to clean up, and this allows having much cleaner lines than the alternative of tracing onto the wood.   The paper can be expensive, but I found a relatively cheap source on line so it was not a wallet beater compared to the brick and mortar stores like Staples or Office Max.  

Allan

 

   

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[druxey]

Off to a  flying start! This looks to be an interesting project in several ways.

[allanyed]

Druxey,

Interesting is an understatement, so far.  Now all I need is to find a wheel chair in 1/24.  I did find a toilet, sink, and mirror in 1/24 that will go into the head.  Just need to "engineer" a way to easily remove the top of the deck house when the time comes so they can see this feature with the ramp and hand rails to make it handicapped accessible which was the idea behind Bristol Marine building this schooner.   

 

More fun down the road when it comes time to make a jib furler and other modern appurtenances.  Makes for a good excuse to go to the local marinas and see them up close.     Anyone out there have good experience with wire rope for standing rigging?   I understand how these should be rigged as they will be attached to turnbuckles, but I have no experience actually installing.   I found the equivalent of 1/4", 1/2" and 1" wire rope sizes, and more, as well as compression fittings for the large size rope which will be about 0.04 diameter.   It is stainless steel 7 strand rope from McMaster Carr, so getting the material is not a problem.  If there are any "tricks" or advice I would love to hear about it.

Allan

[Roger Pellett]

Allan,

  Is it possible that the your “false keel” is actually the real keel, structural member, on the real boat.  The ballast hangs from this and the tapered pieces fore and aft are just there to provide a fair shape.  The naval architect has concentrated the ballast near the boat’s longitudinal center of gravity to keep it out of the ends.

 

Roger

[allanyed]

Hi Roger,

There is no false keel like I have built  but there will be a keelson on top of the frames on the actual vessel.  As the model will be fully planked, I decided to put in the false keel similar to kits with POB builds rather than fully frame her and have the keelson.  I guess I could just call the false keel on the model a keelson which would be more accurate.   Below is a cross section of Ernestina and similar to what actual BB65 would look like regarding the framing, keel and keelson and a clip from the BB65 drawings showing the rabbet line and metal portion of the keel.   BUT, to be sure, I will check with Bristol Marine.  Thanks for the heads up!

Allan

 

Below shows the rabbet line and metal portion of the keel on the BB65 as taken from the original drawings.

[allanyed]

While letting glue cure, did some work on the wheel.   Not terribly difficult at this scale, but still took a little extra attention.   The photos explain better than words.  One comment, based on what I had seen in other build logs, I used a bur to start the holes in the rim, hub, and wooden handles.   It does not wander at all so a great way get the hole started before doing the actual drilling with a normal drill bit.    Allan

 

Marked rim for drilling

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[allanyed]

Framing is up, a couple stakes, including the garboard strakes.  Mast steps are a simple affair but test mast stubs for fore and main were made to be sure the 2 degree lean aft did not cause the mast to collide with a deck frame.  Of course this happened, so the deck frames around the masts will go to both sides and partners made.     With the tilt of the hull a continual use of squares on the building board and a level has made it relatively easy to be sure the top of the frames are exactly the same height port and starboard.   

 

The height of the bulwarks varies between the cap rail and top of the deck clamps from bow to stern going from 19 inches down to just under 17 inches, so it was imperative that all was sitting properly before measuring from the base to the point on each frame where the clamp rests.

 

Allan

[allanyed]

The interior of the main deck house is about 75% complete, lacking the bulkheads, toilet, sink, hand rails and bench cushions.   I want to have a chrome finish on the rails, but not sure of a convenient way to do this.  I'm going to test some brass material with Duplicolor and/or Rustoleum chrome spray finish, but if anyone has a suggestion I am all ears!  

Allan

 

 

 

[kurtvd19]

Try Krylon Premium Metallic - Original Chrome.  Works great.

[bruce d]

Allan, I have seen the results of Alcad products on plastic and they can be verrrrrry convincing. Not used them myself, but a friend swears by them.

https://www.alclad2-online.co.uk/product-category/finishes/

[allanyed]

Thanks to both Kurt and Bruce!   As this is brass (many piece of which will be silver soldered) I will give them a good cleaning with a pickling solution first so I hope for the best.  Thanks again gentlemen.

Allan 

[Jim Lad]

She's certainly come a long way since I last looked in.  First class work, Allan.

 

John

[mtaylor]

3 hours ago, allanyed said:

The interior of the main deck house is about 75% complete, lacking the bulkheads, toilet, sink, hand rails and bench cushions.   I want to have a chrome finish on the rails, but not sure of a convenient way to do this.  I'm going to test some brass material with Duplicolor and/or Rustoleum chrome spray finish, but if anyone has a suggestion I am all ears!  

Allan

 

See if there's an auto shop that does chroming, Allan.  Some do and most don't anymore.  

[allanyed]

Thanks Mark, I just did a quick search and there are two within an hour of me.  Think I'll take a ride to see if they will do such small parts at a reasonable price.  

Allan

[mtaylor]

If that doesn't work.. see Grant's Alfa Romeo build.  The link should take you to the page where he shows a painted? chrome product and results.

 

 

[gjdale]

Alan,

 

You could also try some chrome plating yourself using a relatively inexpenisve kit. Here’s a snippet from my experience doing this on my Chris Craft runabout:

 

Chrome Plating - First Adventures

 

To complete both the Wheel assembly and the Cutwater, some chrome plating was called for. Following the lead of others over on the RC Groups forum, I acquired a Caswell Chrome Plating Kit. It was relatively inexpensive and, as it turned out, quite easy to use. The kit consists of a small transformer with two leads extending from it. The black lead has an alligator clip attached and this gets attached to the part being plated. The red lead plugs into a small wand that has its end wrapped in a bandage, and this is soaked in the plating solution and then rubbed onto the part. And then the magic happens. It’s as easy as that. Not much to show, as I didn’t take photos of the process. Here is the end result though (the camera is not kind – it looks a whole lot better at “normal” viewing distance).  Mmmmmmm……shiny…….

 

[allanyed]

Thanks Mark!

 

Thanks to you as well Grant - For about $50 including shipping, this looks like a great option. 

  

Allan

[allanyed]

While glue dries on the hull planking strakes, I worked on the deck safety rail stanchions.  The stanchions have a base plate which is screwed to the cap rail, but even at this relatively large scale, I did not like the idea of making separate base plates, drilling four holes and trying to replicate four tiny screws to secure the plate and stanchion to the cap rail.  I opted to turn the stanchions and provide the base plate in this manner.  In addition I left a stub that will go through the rail.  To add some security, I glued spacer blocks between the frames, spirketting and hull planking in the appropriate places.  (second photo)  The stub of the stanchion will pass through the rail into the filler blocks and I am sure will be very secure with a bit of epoxy glue.  

 

Drilling the hole in the stanchions would be had me stumped a year ago, but having seen a "how to" on one of the other build logs it was actually quite easy.  First up was make the stanchion.  It was then secured in a vise on my bench top drill press.  I used a small carving burr, as was done when drilling holes in the wheel rim, to create a tiny pilot hole in the center of the stanchion and another at the top.  The burr has a stiff shank and does not wonder on a small curved surface like a drill bit would.   I left the piece in the vise and switched out to a drill bit and drilled the holes through.    Switching to the drill bit while the piece was still in the vise assured that the pilot holes were still dead center at the top.    Pics below.

Allan

 

 

 

 

[allanyed]

The hull took 17 strakes of planking on each side, so took over a week to complete.   Sanding and fairing is 90% complete, with a few high spots to be taken care of.  The remainder of the deck beams and carlings are going in followed by the spriketting over the next few days.    With the entire hull being painted, I was not as careful as normal in getting the planking done so there were a few tiny gaps between the planks in several spots.  Some glue and saw dust that I save from the thickness sander when thicknessing the planks does a great job in filling these and matches the color of the planks.

 

The hull is white above the waterline and red below.  I have found it best to paint the entire hull white first.  3 to 4 coats works well with some steel wool or very fine emery paper between coats.  Once this is complete, the waterline will be taped and the  red below the water line will be painted.  If the white is not done for the entire hull, but rather ends below the water line and above the keel, the red does not look exactly the same at the transition where the white ends and bare wood starts.   Barely noticeable but noticeable none-the-less.     

Allan

 

 

[yvesvidal]

Beautiful and sleek shape.

 

Yves

[BANYAN]

Just found you build Allan, a very nice subject and you model is doing her real justice.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[KeithAug]

I just found your build Allan. I do like the elegant lines of schooner and the Boothbay 65 does have really elegant lines. I look forward to seeing her develop. Just one question about the ships wheel, is the rim to scale? It seems very substantial.

[Jim Lad]

Just catching up, Allan.  That planked hull looks really nice.

 

John