Atlantica Sail training ketch by Wintergreen – Scale 1:30 - POF - A smack of English heritage

[Wintergreen]

Preface

§1 Expectation management

It will be quite some time before any sawdust is made here, probably not before late fall. If you wonder when that is, well, that is October where I’m located at about 58 degrees north. Maybe already in 2021...we will see…

 

§2 Pogress

To quote @mtaylor: “The shipwright is slow, but the wood is patient."

For you as an audience, I urge you to stack up properly with fizzy drinks and popcorn, because this will take some time. However, there are a couple more boats I like to build down the line; hence this build will not take forever, hopefully.

 

§3 The builder - me

Just on the upside of half a century old, maintaining a full time day job, summer holidays spent sailing, managing five to seven kids (or actually young adults now) and half a handful of grand kids I will disappear from time to time. See §2.

 

§4 The captain is always right. Period.

 

§5 In the unlikely event that the Captain is wrong – refer to §4.

 

§6 The ship

When investing so much time and effort into any project there needs to be something that makes you “tick”. There is no shortage of plans and kits of almost any kind of ship. Af Chapman comes to mind, but he will appear later in my boat building career. We have a plethora of leisure crafts, mainly small. Our Swedish constructors didn’t draw them like Fifie of Scotland, GL Watson or NG  Herreshoff, the Wizard from Bristol RI.

 

My mind finally went for Atlantica.

 

Atlantica is a gaff rigged ketch of English smack heritage. Built in Denmark and launched 1980. The main mast is cutter rigged, meaning it has more than one head stay. It also has a bowsprit. More details and specifications for the ship, see below.

The ship is in full service today as a sail training vessel owned and maintained by SXK Seglarskola (SXK Sailing School) which is a sub-branch of the Swedish Cruising Association - SXK (Svenska Kryssarklubben).
More information about the Sailing School can be found here: http://www.sxkseglarskola.se/

 

The site is in Swedish but use Chrome browser and Google translate. The site translates really well. Needless to say I’m a member of said Cruising association and have know of Atlantica and her sisters for a long time.

 

§7 Type of ship – English smack

For some reason I’ve been attracted to this type of hull form, mostly known as a pilot cutter. It has a straight, almost vertical stem, a keel that slopes considerably from stem to stern, a large rudder and either a cut of transom or rounded one. The hull is quite narrow with one mast flying a gaff main sail and topsail. Add to that three headsails and a retractable bowsprit and it makes a handsome vessel.

 

The hull and sail area makes for a fast and seaworthy vessel, which was a demand for piloting. It was a race to get to the merchant ships, first come – first served, any day of the year in any weather.

 

The smack was used in dredging and fishing and was very similar in hull form to the pilot cutter because it also needed speed under sail. First, it takes speed to be able to tow the dredger. From what I’ve read it needs to be above 2 knots. Secondly, when fishing is done, the race was to get home first and land the best deals on the fish market.

 

As with any evolution the smack was not so big from the beginning but grew over time. When the boom grew too large they went from cutter rigged to be ketch rigged. However, as a type, they weren’t that big, usually under 75’ or ca 25 m length on deck.

 

In their hay-day at the end of 1880 the smacks were counted in thousands. 1887 there were just above 3000 registered smacks sailing out of Grimsby, Hull and Brixham. At the turn of the century Grimsby had only 34 left, Hull none.

 

What was the reason for the quick decline? The industrial revolution with steam powered boats swiftly killed the sail powered competition.

 

Back to sailing, a smack usually had a crew of four to five men and a boy, hence the boats could not grew too large.

·         The ships boy also with cooking duties. Signing on at 12 years of age. Apprentice for 5 to 7 years. Did not get paid usually.

·         Deck hand, also an apprentice. Had some pay, but not much.

·         Third hand, an able seaman that was given responsible for watches alone.

·         First mate, captains right hand. Could take full responsible for the ship.

·         Master, or captain. Answered only to God when at sea and when in port answered to the ship owner.

 

§8 The ship – Atlantica

The name is from one of the sponsors, an insurance company. She is built on the lines of her sister ship Gratitude, albeit a fair bit bigger. Again, see http://www.sxkseglarskola.se/ and menu item “Fartygen”. Gratitude is the real deal. She originates from Lowestoft, after her fishing career sold to Sweden and rebuild for cargo carrying.

 

Atlantica, main specifcations
Length on deck: 85’ or 26,2 m
Length on spars: -
Breadth moulded:  20½’ or 6,27 m
Breadth extreme: 21’ or 6,4 m
Depth: 10½’ or 3,2 m
Sail area: 5810 sqf or 540 sqm
Displacement: 134 tonnes
No of bunks: 32
Building material: oak on oak with laid deck of keruing

 

§9 Plans and other sources

In short - a book and a bunch of PDFs’.

 

Why, or where I got the book I can’t remember. I used it to spice up the hull of Regina (see my signature), my previous build back in early 1990, that I know.

The book is in all essential a build log but in printed format and from 1980 well before internet forums. It is full of b/w images and short descriptions to each picture.

 

 

What about plans then? Yes, after a fairly short search I was directed to a fellow model builder. He was involved in the process of the Atlantica build and had gained access to all relevant plans as scanned to PDF. He sent me the lot free of charge! To show my gratitude I donated a sum for the new main mast of Gratitude. The mast came tumbling down when out on an autumn sail this last fall. No one was hurt and not too much damage either bar the mast.

With the help of CAD I have already started to draft the ship. I use Wayne Kempsons’ treatise on “Drafting ship plans in CAD” as a guide. See https://thenrg.org/resources/Documents/articles/DraftingShipPlansInCAD.pdf

 

For the actual layout I will look at the plans from EdTs’ book Naiad.

 

§10 It feels good to end the preface in double figures

Tools and equipment might be of interest. At the moment I do not own a miniature table saw, no small lathe or a fancy milling station.

 

But what I do have is a full size jointer, a full size planer, a full size (2 m) band saw, full size table saw that can take blades of 12” diameter, a wood lathe and a drill press. The lathe can be converted to a disc sander and a thickness sander and for the table saw I will source some thin blade, probably 1,5 mm to try to mill delicate planks. Fall back solution will be a fine tooth blade for the band saw and then a couple of runs through the thickness sander. In the future I might buy me a Proxxon table saw since the Byrnes one is out of reach with VAT and shipping. Until then I’ll make do with what I have.

 

In addition to that I have a cupboard of ordinary carpenters hand tools.

So it will be down to basic skills and a lot of trial and errors during this build.

 

Let the work begin!

 

 

Index

1. Plans and drafting

1.1. Preparing for lofting frames

1.2. Frame lofting party

 

 

Edited February 22, 2022 by Wintergreen

[Wintergreen]

1.     Plans and drafting

I will not delve into too much detail about this process, instead I suggest anyone interested to have a look in Waynes document. What I will do is to point out my own challenges, retakes, and mistakes. That’ll be fun (they said) 😉

 

As previously mentioned, the plans are scanned originals in PDF format. Through some online service I had them converted to PNG, which I understand is the desired format (after BMP) for images with great detail. Both PNG and BMP are uncompressed formats, therefore retaining sharp images even when blown up beyond full scale.

 

The CAD software I use is Turbo CAD Deluxe version 20. It is a reasonable priced software for those without too big ambitions. It says it can handle 3D but I’ve never got my head around using it so I stay in 2 dimensions.

These are the plans I got:

• Lines plan with body, sheer and half breadth plans. 
  
• Construction drawing showing all major details as frames, deck beams, mast supports, deck and side planking, deck openings and what not.
  
• Sail plan
  

• Finally, a big PDF with mast and hardware. Several pages long.

 

 

The process of drafting is to take the lines plan first, load into your CAD software and trace all lines of the sheer and body part and leave out the half breadth plan with all its waterlines. Make sure you have the loaded image in correct size. It usually takes a little fiddling about. I used the length between perpendiculars, because I couldn’t really understand the body plan. More on that later…

 

Next you create a new half breadth plan from your traced body and sheer. Corrections need to be made when you see uneven waterlines, and these corrections propagate back through the body plan all the way to the sheer plan.

When you are satisfied dump the body plan and all corresponding station lines on the sheer plan. Add new stations and draft a new body plan. Easy peacy.

I then took the sheer plan into a new drawing and added the image of the construction plan. The first goal was to create the center line with keel, false keel, keelson, stem, stem pieces, stern, deadwood and all that. I noted that the two drawings weren’t too far off one another which was good. On the construction plan the rabbet was presented and so I added that to my center line.

 I took a while to disassemble the structure. One challenge when using the polyline to trace parts is that what looks like a piece is actually a void. Like the small triangular deadwood piece closest to the inner sternpost. Such things become obvious when you explode your drawing.

 

I keep the perpendiculars and waterline to always have a common reference point when moving between drawings.

 

Next I was to start drafting al frames, 47 all in all. The first one sits at the sternpost, like in this picture.

 

The last frame sits at the junction between the keel and the stem.  Forward of that is just bollard timbers, which I don’t really know how to fasten to the hull.

 

The stern is made up of every so much timber there can be. The square-ish timber in the lower left is the fashion piece rising up from the sternpost.

 

Just as I was about to start with the frames I came to a full stop. Something wasn’t quite right. To loft frames one uses the half breadth plan and the sheer plan. The half breadth plan gives you the width of each frame at any given waterline and the sheer gives you the height at any given station/frame line.

 

However, when I was to start with the foremost frame (because they are simple) things didn’t add up. I couldn’t get the waterlines to create a frame for me and I also lacked the rabbet line. Suddenly one thing caught my attention.

 

This is a close up of the stem. Notice how the waterlines all meet the stem very far forward?

 

The only reasonable reason I could think of is that instead of waterlines depicting the shape at the inside of the planking all lines were of the outside! Sure enough, what do you say – sometimes your eyes clouds your vision?

 

Yellow highlighted by me. Say no more.

 

That’s why the waterlines come all the way forward. And also my body plan needs to be re-done. Sigh. But like a chain event I suddenly understood why I had troubles with the body plan.

 

This is a magnification of a part of the body plan. The vertical, straight leftmost line is the square that defines the “body”. But no station goes all the way out, why? Simply because the extreme breadth of the ship falls between two station lines. Not like on old drawings where station 0 is at the extreme breadth. Some things are just plain obvious once you revisit them 😉

 

How to proceed? First I need to re-trace the body plan and make a new half breadth plan.

 

When that is done I can take the body plan and do a line copy of each station at 65 mm inwards. 65 mm is the thickness of the planking. With this new body plan I can then make a new half breadth plan. Just doing a straight line-copy enters a slight error because the inner line is a tiny bit smaller. Think circles inside circles. I will play around in my CAD sw to see if I can remedy this.

 

And when that is done - Then I can start lofting frames!

 

Why didn’t the draftsman just draw to the inside of planking? Probably because the lines come from Gratitude, the sister ship, and that they measured her up to create drawings for Atlantica.

[Jim Lad]

That's a really nice looking vessel, Håkan, I'm happily pulling up my seat to watch!

 

John

[Tony Hunt]

Me too. I'm just trying to teach myself ship drafting in TurboCAD 20 so, I'm watching with real interest.

[jlefever]

Similar in size and complexity to my current project (a pinky) I'll follow yours with interest. Short of the ops with planking thickness, you seem to be making a good start.

 

I love the photographs. Its humbling to me as a modeler to recognize just how big the actual timbers are compared to the tiny pieces we manipulate in building out models.

 

Jim

[Wintergreen]

John, Tony and Jim - thank you and welcome to this show of "slow TV" 😄 

 

Tony, good of you to mention the use of same CAD sw. I'll remember to add the specific features I use and all others will have to adapt that to their preferred CAD sw.

 

Yes Jim, the ship is quite big and at 1:30 the hull will be almost 870 mm with a breadth of 210 mm. I figure it will be quite handy to build. Not too small and not too big. And my previous to boats are at 1:30 also, the Regina and the kåg.

Speaking og the kåg, better head out to the shop and continue... 

Cheers!

[bolin]

Interesting to see your new build. The teaser you posted in the Kågen thread raised my curiosity.

 

Your details regarding the CAD work is instructive. I hope to learn, and maybe practice in future builds.

[Wintergreen]

1.1.                   Preparing for lofting frames

To address the issue of “Lines to outside of planking” work started over.

The body plan was traced yet again, this time with correct width or breadth. To move all station lines to inside of planking the offset function was used. It creates a line offset by the distance you type in, taking into account curves and all. There is however one disadvantage with the offset, or any of the other “line copy” functions. It creates a line with a myriad of nodes, or control point. Se picture below with the traced line and then the line created with the offset function.

 

The effect of this is that nothing can be done with this line. It is not feasible trying to adjust it or so but the solution is quite simple, just trace a new line on top of the offset line and remove the offset created line.

 

 

Now we have a line that can be tampered with without too much headache. Rinse and repeat and all station lines have been moved 65 mm inwards in a nick of time.

Next step will be a new half breadth plan where water lines start from the inner rabbet line and follow the inside of planking. It is straight forward. Remember to hit CTRL+S to save your work every now and then. TurboCad dies on me once in a while and recently I lost last some half hours’ worth of work.

Be sure to use the curve tool that goes through its control points, not the other one. That will leave you with a host of problems later.

Once the new half breadth plan is done, fairing comes next. Even though the Bezier tool creates nice curvy lines it can’t for example foresee the shape of a counter stern on a boat. Next picture highlights some areas that needs direct attention. On top of the plan is the created water lines.

 

Close to the centerline it is obvious that water lines 7½ and up needs addressing. But look further up also, especially 6½ and 8 have unsightly bumps and dents. If left there is always the possibility to fair the wood frames once installed. But that will create an erroneous shape on the transom in that it will be pointy. Around the centerline the transom should be smooth and round, not sharp with an edge.

After some fairing and adjusting the lines plan is finished.

 

 

Next up will be lofting all frames. A quite repetitive task but better get used to it since there will be more of that down the line.

 

As I've mentioned before, anyone interested in a more detailed instruction regarding lofting in CAD should read the work of  @wrkempson found here: https://thenrg.org/resources/Documents/articles/DraftingShipPlansInCAD.pdf 

It is really good and instructive.

 

Thanks for your interest in this and please keep on asking and discussing. Much appreciated!

 

[G.L.]

Very interesting log, Hakan. I signed in to follow.

[wefalck]

Another log I missed so far. Will now stay tuned !

[FlyingFish]

Me too - an interesting project!

[Wintergreen]

Hi guys!

No progress to report. Quite the contrary.

The software I use crashes on me regularly, which makes progress painfully slow and no fun at all.

It probably has to do with an old and slow PC with too little memory. I probably also need to update the software (TurboCAD De luxe).

Both actions require funds, which are a bit scarce at the moment. This will probably be sorted come July.

"Sorry for the inconvenience" 😕 

Or as another well known character says: "Ayll be back!"

 

[vaddoc]

Oops! I completely missed your new log Hakan! An excellent choice of boat and of scale. I ll be following for sure. 

Your drafting looks good. One advantage 3D has is that after the initial fairing of waterlines etc you can create and work with surfaces, then project vertical lines to get the shape of the frames with all bevels in a flash. But you have done very well on 2D.

How will you print your drafts? Some will be close to 1000 mm long!

[Wintergreen]

Welcome Vaddoc. 

 

As for printing there are a couple of alternatives. One is to use the local printing shop and another is any of the online services available.

Cost and ease of use will be the decisive points.

The loose plan is to gather as much as possible on an as large sheets as possible and then cut it up myself. If sheet size is a limitation I'll just have to split items so they fit.

 

[vaddoc]

The reason I am asking Hakan is that printing the plans has been a headache for me. Printing A4 and gluing together produced major inaccuracies at 800+ mm. Printing in a shop was not an option to print the 3D shapes I wanted at the views I needed-would the shop have the needed software to open the files? Converting to pdf, the compression is such that curves become series of small right angle lines-not an option, at least for 3D plans.

I bought an A3 paper roll and I cut long pieces to A4 width and print with custom settings on my A4 printer. Even so, long straights lines end up ever so slightly curved. My next printer will def be an A3 one. 

 

I m really looking forward to this build!

[Wintergreen]

Okey, I see. Well, as you've noticed I work in 2D. It works for me and I'm reluctant to invest in the time needed to learn all the features of 3D.

 

 

[wefalck]

Simple solution: I only build models that fit onto an A4-sheet 🥴

[Wintergreen]

12 hours ago, wefalck said:

Simple solution: I only build models that fit onto an A4-sheet

I hear you wefalck. 🙂 

Instead of 1:30 I could go with 1:60 or the more common 1:64 or why not 1:96?

However, I'm not really into these miniature jobs (yet). With greater skill down the line - maybe.

[Seglaren]

Hello!

Im a motivated 16 year old boy who sails this vessels (Atlantica, Gratitude and Gratia) and ivve never built a boat before and I really wanna build atlantica. Do you guys think its possible for me to pull this off? Or is it a big no no? 

 

Thank you

[Wintergreen]

On 12/8/2021 at 10:13 PM, Seglaren said:

Hello!

Im a motivated 16 year old boy who sails this vessels (Atlantica, Gratitude and Gratia) and ivve never built a boat before and I really wanna build atlantica. Do you guys think its possible for me to pull this off? Or is it a big no no? 

 

Thank you

 

Hello Seglaren! 

I would suggest that you actually buy and build one of the kits out there depicting these kind of vessels. One is Billing Boats FD 10 Yawl at scale 1:50. It gives a reasonable sized boat. A couple of others are the new, and higher quality kits from Vanguard Models, Erycina a ketch and Nisha a cutter (single mast). Both at scale 1:64 which produces smaller boats, fewer details and easier to place on you favourite shelf.
Don't bite off more than you can chew and give it a go!

[mtaylor]

On 12/8/2021 at 1:13 PM, Seglaren said:

Hello!

Im a motivated 16 year old boy who sails this vessels (Atlantica, Gratitude and Gratia) and ivve never built a boat before and I really wanna build atlantica. Do you guys think its possible for me to pull this off? Or is it a big no no? 

 

Thank you

Håkan is right.  Start simple and small and build your skills from there.  There's no such thing as a "big no-no".... just a learning curve.

[Roger Pellett]

Hakan,

 

I am assuming that you have not abandoned this project so my comments are still relevant.

 

With regard to the inside-outside planking problem , I suggest a different approach.

 

First using the drawing that you have, construct a table of offsets.  An Excel Spreadsheet works for this.  These offsets will be to the outside of the planking.

 

Now, you need to correct each offset for planking thickness:

 

The amount that you need to deduct is not always the actual plank thickness; it’s the thickness, corrected for the angle that the plank makes with the frame.  To do this you need to add two more columns to your spreadsheet; the vertical and horizontal angles that the plank would make with the frame at each offset point.  I have found that these angles can be eyeballed in 15 degree increments; close enough for our purposes.

 

Using basic trigonometry functions,  apply these angles to your plank thickness.  This is your correction factor.  It will be more, less, or in a few cases equal to planking thickness.

 

Deduct the correction factor from its corresponding offset point.

 

Re-plot the offset points.  You will also have to refair as some data points may not match up exactly.

 

This will give you a new lines drawing to inside of planking that is more accurate than just deducting a constant plank thickness.  It also doesn’t require dealing with your idiosyncratic CAD system.😏

 

Roger

 

 

Edited December 11, 2021 by Roger Pellett

[Wintergreen]

@Roger Pellett indeed it is not abandoned, just slow. Thank you for your concerns and tip regarding lines plan. 
However, I'm more of a make it up as you go type of guy. With a reasonable planning ahead of course. Since this vessel stems from working boats and is in some sense already a bastard I'm not too concerned about to the mm accuratess. 

Bastard? Yes, Atlanticas lines were taken of her sister ship, Gratitude. Only that Gratitude is a fair bit smaller, so they just blew the lines up a bit to suit their needs. I have EdT:s first Naiad book where he delves into the intricacies of drafting as well, using all kinds of measuring, angles, offsets and whatnot. To be fair, it is a bit over my ambition for Atlantica.

 

But again, thank you for taking the time to explain a different approach. It is always welcome with different thoughts.

 

Cheers!

[Nirvana]

Hej Håkan,

I didn't realize you had Atlantica going as a new project.

The three ships SXK has are very interesting ships with amazing history.

I like to thank you for the link regarding the usage of software to create plans to build a ship from.
I hope more people will find this useful.

Finally, I hope you are doing well with your recovery.

As a side-step, we got our share of snow yesterday about 5 inches.....

Gott Nytt År  (I was about to write Happy Ending in Swedish as well, but that would be a bad combination) 😇

Sköt om dig!

[Wintergreen]

Per, yes  have this log as well. 🙂 

The early plan was to make sawdust this fall. That didn't happen for a number reasons.

My plan B is to actually start it this year. That might still happen, even if I'm forced to a short brake and some days out of the shed now. Can't do much building with one hand... I have the injured hand stuck in a sock to prevent me from doing anything I shouldn't do.

I wish you a Happy, Prosperous New Year as well!

 

[John Fox III]

On 4/4/2021 at 7:47 PM, Tony Hunt said:

Me too. I'm just trying to teach myself ship drafting in TurboCAD 20 so, I'm watching with real interest.

Greetings Wintergreen & Tony,

 

I do CAD ship plans often, one tip I would suggest is to save the tracings of the existing plan images, then continue working in your normal methods. If at any future time you find an error, simply go back to the original traced and saved drawing. No need then to retrace anything. I often save my plans whenever I make any big new step in their preparation, allowing me to "go back" to any previous point. I simply save the file under the ship name with a number, and keep increasing the number each time I save.

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

[Wintergreen]

That's an excellent tip John!

As it happens I've done just that, have one "original" and then all subsequent plans are derivations from that original. The numbering is clever also. Will adopt that. Thanks!

[Wintergreen]

Alas, sawdust!

Same scale, a lot bigger... as per usual I have started with the stem pieces. By no means perfect and also managed to incorporate some sapwood in the lower part of stem. I will redo the stem buildup another day. Today I was more interested in what kind of challenges I have with tooling. Square faces and all that. Anyway, it didn't come out half-bad. Also, being constantly tired, long days in the shop is not feasible sadly enough.

 

But why start building, the drawings aren't finished, are they?

No, they're not. But I had some challenges in "seeing" the stern part since the center-line has different widths (sidings) around the rudder and propshaft. Therefore I though it better to start putting the center-line together and move on with drafting after that.

 

The wood is apple, if anyone wonder. Harvested some 10 years ago... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jim Lad]

Ah!  Some ship pieces to watch!

 

John

[KeithAug]

Good to see the sawdust phase has started.