Lowell Grand Banks Dory by Shepherd - FINISHED - Model Shipways - 1:24

[Shepherd]

Howdy folks. I made an introduction topic in early 2020, bought a couple starter kits and tools, and then a bunch of weird stuff happened which brought about my never even opening the shipping box. Now as the weird series of events continues relentlessly toward no clear destination, I've arrived at a point where it makes sense to build some model boats. The short version leading to this point involves:

 

• Originally living in my vehicle on the Appalachian Trail, and perceiving some time and a need for some hobby to keep me busy in early 2020 while I was living alone in one of the trail maintenance facilities
• Having to get out of there after it was condemned and deciding it was time to actually try settling down in Maine as I'd long wanted to do
• Acquiring vacant land which used to be a farm in Midcoast Maine, converting a shed into a cabin, and building a timber frame house
• Deciding I'd like to get into sailing, falling in with sailors and boatbuilders, and winding up with full-size wooden boats about the place, including an actual Grand Banks dory which my housemate (one of the aforementioned boatbuilders) brought along
• Deciding I'm really very interested in building a weird 25'6" Phil Bolger-designed schooner, the William D Jochems, and ordering plans
  • Although I have built a house I still work all over the Appalachian Trail, and having a sailboat that I can trailer without great difficulty, use as a camper during the work week, and easily launch and rig in the nearest handy body of water on the weekends seems pretty snazzy
• Deciding to build a model of that before building it full-sized, and finally
• Deciding to build the model boats I already have before building a 1:16 scale William D Jochems before building a full-sized schooner in my garage

So there's the short version leading up to today, when I made space on the old table on sawhorses that has floated around the house serving in numerous capacities. It was previously sitting against a wall where I'm going to start building a big buffet cabinet for the dining room part of the large open "great room" space. I cut the packing tape, opened up the Lowell Grand Banks Dory box, and took inventory of its contents plus the other tools and stuff I'd ordered so long ago.

That's as far as I got tonight, that and the logging back in here, writing this, and hoping it may be of some entertainment.

 

Cheers,

Shepherd

  

Edited January 26 by Shepherd

[Shepherd]

Yesterday I began by gluing up the bottom. The three planks didn't want to come together at the tips, but I figured out I could hold them all in plane with a large clamp, then pinch the ends together with small ones.

 

While this was drying, I built the frames and transom assembly. The frames were set into the building board, the cleats and then the stem and transom were glued onto the bottom, and the bottom was attached to the frames.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This evening I did some fairing. I was pretty amused by this, because I have a few rolls of adhesive-backed sandpaper I bought for the torture boards I built to fair my old sloop. I used a teeny tiny sliver of this sandpaper to instead fair the frames of this little boat, adhered to a scrap from one edge of the building board. Instead of going across three frames at a time for the whole process, I started by hogging off material (is it even hogging at this scale?) from the frames one at a time, using the bottom as a guide and angling the sanding board at a tangent to that. When I checked the fairing with thinner stock, I only needed to touch up fifth frame and transom.

 

I also needed to reattach the transom assembly, as I seemed to have set it too far back. Then when I set that back on, the transom popped off of its knee. When I reached for it, I knocked the stem free too. Those pieces are now back in place and better glued, although I have to set the transom slightly further backward again. Right now its top is sitting just in front of the notch meant for it, so the back of the bottom is pushed out of shape. I'll do that tomorrow. For now I've beveled the garboards, set them in place, and brushed them with water to get some shape on them.

 

Edited January 25 by Shepherd

[SiriusVoyager]

Looks like you are off to a good start. Those rolling bevels can be tricky on those thin strakes, but don't stress about them too much.

[Shepherd]

I got on the garboards and moved on to the broad planks. I tried a few different ways of holding them in place as I inched them along frame-by-frame, and came up with the solution of using a rubber band to press a clothespin against the plank at each frame, along with a clamp on the next (unglued) frame ahead to help it take the curve. Once I was confident in this I was able to glue a frame, wander off on some house or cooking project (I'm between jobs right now), then come back later to glue the next one. There are the lines burned on the planks for beveling, sure, but I used dividers to help make sure I was setting the planks at similar elevations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After bending the sheer planks I glued those similarly. I had to change my system a bit since I couldn't clamp the plank to the next unglued frame ahead of the one I was gluing. The provided spring clamps don't apply quite enough pressure on their own, so I used one clamp to double up the pressure of a second clamp, all clamped to a clothespin, so I could set up the whole thing to press the plank against the next frame. Building a house mostly on my own has encouraged much innovative applications of clamps, come-alongs, cordage, etc.

 

On Saturday I went to the first of two canvas ditty bag workshops at the Apprenticeshop in Rockland, ME. I've been reading The Sailmaker's Apprentice as part of my studying up toward building myself a full-sized sailboat, so it was a good opportunity to take things off the page. I finished the sheer planks by alternating between gluing one frame, and stitching more of the ditty bag.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I jokingly asked my housemate, a professional boatbuilder and bad influence who hasn't talked me out of any of my weird boatbuilding ambitions, to help me flip the dory. I wish I had a better saw blade than the one that came with the kit for this purpose, but the miter saw in the larger toolkit I'd ordered is definitely too aggressive for this.

 

I added the side cleats and did some sanding before adding the false stem. The first side cleat proved to be a literally and figuratively cross-grained little thing, and turned itself into a squiggly line once I wet it down. After that I glued each one first at the bottom, then along the rest of its length so they couldn't choose their own adventures.

 

The false stem has been a bit of a puzzle, as I see no labeled part to use and the instructions didn't specify a stock size. I used the leftover material from the bottom cleats, and it's taken some persuasion to make it stay put. I think it isn't going anywhere at this point, so once it dries I will be back at it.

 

Unfortunately when flipping the boat I found the transom isn't square. Argh, it had been tough to line up and I thought I had gotten it. From underneath while planking it wasn't obvious, and without the planks built-on to provide more reference I hadn't detected the irregularity when I could have easily done something about it. I don't know if I'll go so wild as to open the stern up and rotate the transom...

Edited January 25 by Shepherd

[SiriusVoyager]

I remember the issue with the false stem. I think you are supposed to make one with some scrap wood or one of the supplied strips. The instructions don’t really address it, but it should be doable from the blueprints in the front. 
 

As far as the transom, if you are using white glue, isopropyl alcohol does a pretty good job of releasing the bonds. You may be able to fix it without having to undo all of the planking. 

[Shepherd]

I am using white glue. Thinking maybe I will release the transom knee first, then spring the transom from the sides and reglue it, then set the knee in place once the transom correctly aligned.

[Shepherd]

(Aside - I thought I had been cleverly formatting these but yikes, everything on the post above seems to have run around on me almost as bad as an MS Word document. Is it worth trying to format the photos in amidst the text or is it best to just drop them at the bottom unless there's perhaps just one photo to share in a post?)

 

I've been slowly advancing this project, up to more or less completion. But first, the transom. I did release this and re-glue it much more satisfactorily. I did change some other geometry in so doing, and added a bit of shape I don't like to one of the garboards, but there was a net gain in symmetry. Gluing the transom back in place was quite a challenge though, and involved settling for getting the bottom to stick in place where I needed it to be, walking around for a while pinching it in place, and then finding a way to clamp to the sheer one side at a time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I started painting after this. At least on the interior I wish I had sealed or at least wetted the pieces before putting them in so I could sand the raised grain much better than once built. I used some of a worn out old sanding net for my random orbital sander to get what I could, as well as a small chisel blade to scrape. I thought about painting to match my housemate's dory outside, as I have house paints that would closely match it, but went with the paint that was already in front of me.

 

Once everything had three coats on, I began putting the cap rail in place. Holding my sanding stick to the bottom and the rail to the top with rubber bands, plus clamps further down the sheer to keep the rails aligned with the gunwales, let me hop over to this and glue a bit more at a time while doing whatever else I was doing.

 

 

Edited January 25 by Shepherd

[SiriusVoyager]

I didn't even realize that posts could be formatted like that.

 

Looking good.  I'm glad fixing the transom worked out for you!

[Shepherd]

Once the cap rail was on, I had just a bit of paint that needed touching up. I also needed to paint and glue a fiddly little triangle of no more than 1/8" on a side to the aft end of the starboard cap rail, as it had split undesirably along the short grain. while I was trimming around the transom.

 

The thwarts mostly went in with little modification beyond beveling, but the forward thwart had to be shortened dramatically. This was a bit puzzling, as I am sure I set the risers on the marks on the frame. These were somewhat obscured on a couple frames after sanding them, but I think I made sure of their locations using dividers to compare them with the booklet. In any case, the hull slooks fair and the risers seem to be in the correct place, and the thwart is sitting well after being trimmed. I stained the thwarts and the base lightly with some "new pine" stain I've been using around the house.

 

The beckets were a bit of a struggle. They match the size in the materials list in the instructions, but they were much too large to fit in the holes without reaming them out significantly with a round file. A dab of glue on each end of the line let me pass it through without it coming to pieces. I wish to have done a more seamanlike knot, but anything but the simplest looked far too bulky. The photos of this step in the instructions give me the impression that a smaller line was used for that model than was provided for this one.

 

The thole pins also gave me pause. The instructions mention a provided dowel, the material list didn't include a dowel, and there was none included with the kit. Not knowing where I might have toothpicks kicking around, I cut long slivers off one of the sheets and sanded them as round as I could, holding them in place against the sandpaper and spinning them.

 

The oars I mostly worked with a chisel for the bulk of the material removal, then switched to sandpaper. Inspired by the oars for the Bantry Bay gigs that Atlantic Challenges works on, which I helped get ready for last season during a volunteer work weekend last year, I painted little bands to denote each set of oars.

 

That's it for this boat, folks. I wish I could take the last picture sitting on top of my housemate's dory outside, but the weather is not cooperating with this whim. I'm still slowly working my way through the building key for the schooner I want to build in my garage, assembling material lists for the full-size boat and for a 1:16 scale model. While I am still doing that I will be moving on to the other model I bought near the beginning of the pandemic, the Willie L. Bennett Chesapeake Bay Skipjack.

[JacquesCousteau]

Very nicely done, congratulations!

[SiriusVoyager]

Very nice looking Dory!

[druxey]

A very nice job on the dory, Shepherd! Well done.

[MBerg]

On 1/26/2024 at 12:51 PM, Shepherd said:

the forward thwart had to be shortened dramatically. This was a bit puzzling, as I am sure I set the risers on the marks on the frame

I know this is a few months old, but I'm just fitting my seat risers. As I was waiting for them to wet bend I fit the thwarts in and found the exact same thing. On frame #1 it sat way higher than the mark. I'm assuming it has something to do with the design that needs fixing.

 

In any case, I scoured a few build logs to see if anyone mentioned it and only came across yours. Hope this may help others down the line as well. I will be doing the same as you. riser is set on the designated mark, so I'll be sanding down the thwart. The thwart as is, appear to be too high when compared to the others.

 

Edit: Fantastic job by the way - your model looks great!

Edited May 31 by MBerg
See up

[Ken_2]

I too, am viewing your build after you are completed.  I like your pictures and your explanations as you build.  And your resultant boat looks very nice.  Good luck on building your full-size boat!  Maybe you could add a few pictures to this log as you progress on your full-size boat or add a link to where you are documenting the build.

Ken