Canoa de Rancho by JacquesCousteau - Scale 1:32 - Lake Chapala Fishing and Cabotage Vessel

[FriedClams]

Excellent result on the thatching, Jacques.  Your perseverance certainly paid off. 

 

Gary 

[JacquesCousteau]

On 5/31/2024 at 3:32 PM, FriedClams said:

Excellent result on the thatching, Jacques.  Your perseverance certainly paid off. 

 

Gary 

Thanks! Wefalck's suggestion to use string to weave together bunches was extremely helpful and has definitely led to a stronger thatching than my first attempt.

 

I've made the oarlocks/thole pins, using a bit of basswood and a thinned toothpick. From what I can tell, these weren't all that common on Canoas de Rancho, but some of the smaller ones had them. As my build is meant to model a vessel that would be used not just for cargo hauling but for fishing, which did require the use of oars, I decided to add them. They're not glued in place yet. From what I can tell from photos, they were often staggered, as I've depicted here.

 

I may redo them, though, as I think they came out a little oversized. I also might paint them instead of staining them.

[JacquesCousteau]

I've done a bit more work with the mast.

 

First, I drilled and cut out the sheave at the top of the mast. I decided to try to make a working sheave, as I had picked up a small bag of 3.5mm sheaves from the Crafty Sailor closing sale. I used a bit of 24 gauge wire. It was hard to get a good photo, but it is a working sheave.

 

Next, although I won't be fully adding the rigging until after the move, I thought that I could at least add the backstay and leave it dangling loosely off the mast. I used .7mm rope from Ropes of Scale, my first time using it. It's a very nice product! Worried that I would ruin it, I just worked on making a loop at the very end of the rope. First I tried to actually splice in the loop, but I had a very hard time opening up the rope for that. Instead I used glue to "knot" the loop, and tried my hand at serving the "knot" with some tan thread. I'm not sure whether they actually served any of the rigging on actual Canoas, as I couldn't find a very clear photo, but I figure that this is a learning experience, and if I decide against it later, I've only lost an inch or so of the nice rope.

 

Serving it was tricky and would have been impossible without a set of helping hands. Here's before I trimmed off the excess. As can be seen, it turned out rather lumpy, unfortunately.

 

In any case, once I tied off the end and applied some watered-down glue, I was able to place it around the top of the mast (nickel for scale):

 

And then a test fitting, although without getting the line taught yet (as the mast is just on a pin and not lashed to the crossbeam).

 

 

I'm still deciding whether to redo it, as the serving is a bit bulkier than I think I really want. It's still attached to the whole spool, so I wouldn't be wasting much rope.

 

After some consideration, and looking at lots of photos of canoas with one, two, or no backstays, I'm leaning towards giving this model just one, and tying off the halyard at the other belaying point aft.

 

[wefalck]

Some people, including myself, use hypodermic needles as marlinspikes for making false splices miniature rope. One has to blunt the edges a bit - they are obviously very sharp and meant to cut, but you don't want to cut your rope. You twist the rope a bit so that it splits and then you push the 'marlinspike' through. Now you can feed the free end into the needle and slowly pull it out with the rope inside - repeat and you will end up with a reasonable splice.

 

As I had a nice ebony handle lying around (which may have come from some antique medical instrument from my fathers estate), I made a brass ferrule for it and cemented a hypodermic needle into it. I think it was a 20G (yellow).

For serving, I would try to get hold of some 16/0 fly-tying thread, which is not fuzzy. Indeed, serving without some 'helping hands' is difficult. I tend to use half-hitches, rather than just winding the thread around. Each turn in this way can be set and does not come loose. Of course, having/building a serving machine would be the next step up ...

Edited Saturday at 04:59 PM by wefalck

[JacquesCousteau]

17 minutes ago, wefalck said:

Some people, including myself, use hypodermic needles as marlinspikes for making false splices miniature rope. One has to blunt the edges a bit - they are obviously very sharp and meant to cut, but you don't want to cut your rope. You twist the rope a bit so that it splits and then you push the 'marlinspike' through. Now you can feed the free end into the needle and slowly pull it out with the rope inside - repeat and you will end up with a reasonable splice.

 

As I had a nice ebony handle lying around (which may have come from some antique medical instrument from my fathers estate), I made a brass ferrule for it and cemented a hypodermic needle into it. I think it was a 20G (yellow).

For serving, I would try to get hold of some 16/0 fly-tying thread, which is not fuzzy. Indeed, serving without some 'helping hands' is difficult. I tend to use half-hitches, rather than just winding the thread around. Each turn in this way can be set and does not come loose. Of course, having/building a serving machine would be the next step up ...

Thanks, I'm definitely going to look into some fly-tying thread and a needle. I used to tie flies and this definitely reminded me of that, although I'm very out of practice and don't have my old tools anymore.

[Glen McGuire]

3 hours ago, JacquesCousteau said:

I'm still deciding whether to redo it, as the serving is a bit bulkier than I think I really want. It's still attached to the whole spool, so I wouldn't be wasting much rope.

In the close-up picture, it looks a little bulky.  However, when I see as part of the whole boat in the latter pics, I thought it look fine.  But definitely your call on that as things can look different in person vs pictures.

 

Regardless of what you decide, the boat is really coming along nicely!  Such a cool project.

[JacquesCousteau]

1 hour ago, Glen McGuire said:

In the close-up picture, it looks a little bulky.  However, when I see as part of the whole boat in the latter pics, I thought it look fine.  But definitely your call on that as things can look different in person vs pictures.

 

Regardless of what you decide, the boat is really coming along nicely!  Such a cool project.

Thanks! I do think it's a bit bulky, and I would have liked to properly splice the rope, so I think I'm going to try to redo it once I get some fly-tying thread.