DUTCH PINAS 1590 by tartane - FINISHED - scale 1:87 - reconstruction

tartane · April 6

In this topic consisting of several episodes, I am going to tell you something about the construction of this ship. Although it is very small in real life, and many times smaller on a scale of 1:87, it was a fairly difficult job to get it done and it is based on a lot of research.

At the beginning of June 2018, I started building a model of the ship on which Willem Barents sailed to Nova Zembla in 1596. The Northern trade route had to be found, but that failed and Barents had to spend the winter on this island in the Arctic Ocean with 16 other crewmenbers. But the year after they returned to Holland.

Shortly after this event, drawings were made of this ship that served as illustrations for the travelogue of Gerrit de Veer, one of the members of the crew.

schip.jpg.d9072a2ef0ab52032e58964bed00c612.jpg

The two ships of Heemskerk and De Rijp. The commander was Barents, who was on Heemskerk's ship. The names of the ships are not mentioned anywhere.

As a result, reconstruction attempts were made to find out what the ship looked like. Ab Hoving has written a book with fine detailed reconstruction drawings, which form the basis of the construction of the model with which I started.

By the way, I am not supposed to call this model “the ship of Barents”. I never build models of ships that had a name, but only build ship types. In consultation with Ab Hoving, we decided to call this type an "Early Pinas". A Pinas is a very well-known type that was built frequently, especially after 1600 in Holland. This ship dates from just before that time, around 1590, and at that time a number of later inventions had not yet been applied.

Since I have built more ship models on HO scale, so 1:87, it was logical that I would do that again. The models can then be compared in terms of size.

Installing the rigging took a lot of time, also because it was all still unknown territory for me.

In the previous 40 years, I did long-term research on Latin-rigged ships that sailed around the Mediterranean, and built models on a scale of 1:87 as a result of those studies. The rigging and hull construction are vastly different from square-rigged ships.

This was my first square-rigged ship. At first I looked despondently at the drawings of the rigging, but after a while I understood all the functions. Repeatedly, I had to remove it again and try again.

Ab Hoving was always ready to provide me with the necessary advice. His help was indispensable because he had also carried out the entire research on this ship and had described it in his book;

HET SCHIP VAN WILLEM BARENTS. Een hypothetische reconstructie van een laat-zestiende eeuws jacht (A hypothetical reconstruction of a late sixteenth century yacht).ISBN 90-6550-772-8

Many of the techniques that can be found here are also described on my website; www.constantwillems.nl

And the same applies to this model; it is a reconstruction, so there is a chance that the ship looked different in details.

The construction of the hull

A start was made with transferring the trusses, obtained from data from Hoving's drawings, to paper. Those drawings are on a scale of 1 : 75 and it was a simple action to take those drawings to a copy shop where they were transferred to scale HO., 1 : 87.

Like all my models, I built this boat mainly from pear wood. Part of it is made of paranapine. It is built on rafters of plywood thick 3 mm. Actually a bit too thick but I tried to imitate the lip welds of the original construction and then a wide enough surface is needed to make those welds on those rafters.

The trusses as I first drew them

I always work with half-trusses, as can be seen in the drawing.

When all the half-trusses on the port side are glued to the central truss, all imperfections on that side can be repaired very accurately by filing away excess material. When everything is satisfactorily secured, I start with the other side. To this end, moulds are made from the already glued trusses, which are carefully sawn out and glued to starboard. Thus, everything is completely equal on both sides.

The longitudinal truss is made of plywood 1.5 mm thick. The bow, keel and stern are made of pear wood. These parts were glued all around against the longitudinal truss so that on the port and starboard side there is still above those parts 0,75 mm to support the ends of the planks. The locations of the numbered half-trusses are indicated on the longitudinal trusses, as shown on the drawings in the book.

Because the longitudinal truss is quite thin, it can bend easily, so it was screwed onto a board and I added small distance partitions between the rafters. At the bow arrived a filler piece of balsa wood that had been filed into the right shape to give the planks at the bow the correct shape. After unscrewing the longitudinal truss, it turned out to be an indeformable unit and the other rafter halves could be glued.

When everything was in place, on both sides of the longitudinal bilge, I made the stern. The construction has quite a few bends and to make that easier, a mold was placed on the work board to make the right shapes.

The top piece was made of balsa wood. The black hole is the interior of the cabin where a window was later added. The lower timbers have already been installed here, which already gave the framework a lot of strength. The transom is of one mm. plywood with the planks glued on top in the right pattern. Later, the openings were added.

The support boards between a number of trusses are painted black. They are behind the open, or closed, gun ports.

The struts for the bulwarks were made of plywood. This is only necessary to attache the planks above the deck which form the bullwark. Once they are glued on, the plywood pieces were carefully removed and then be replaced by the struts in the correct dimensions and material.

The top of the bulwark was called the rahout (Dutch word; ra is yard, hout is wood). On an early pinas it was customary to lower the yards on the bulwarks in order to stow or strike the sails. This is how the name rahout came about. On later ships, the sails were stowed or struck on the hoisted yards.

GrandpaPhil · April 6

Looking forward to this build!

I really want to build the pinas out of Ab Hoving’s “17th Century Dutch Merchant Ships” sometime in the future.

Edited April 6 by GrandpaPhil

tartane · April 7

The cabin was fitted with two doors on the deck side. Doors and planks (veneer thick approx. 0.8 mm.) are glued to a piece of plywood of one mm. thick. The wall of the cabin is also a truss mould for the further construction at the rear of the ship.

At the location of the future gun ports, I made the necessary openings in plywood. The front gun gate has not yet been made here. It is positioned in the curve of the bow and appears in a closed state when the hull is finished. Also, the top wale has already been installed here.

To protect the underlying construction of the superstructure during the planking of the hull, I made roughly both sides above the upper timber from cardboard. The hull is already partly equipped with planks. The part between the upper two wales, in which the gun ports are placed, are made of paranapine. The wood is fine-grained, not too hard and easy to bend and work with. The planks are a maximum of 3.5/4 mm. wide. Which equates to about 33 cm in reality.

The curve above the transom is now also provided with planks. The opening for the rudder pin, the tiller, has been cut out.

The joints of the planks are provided with lip weldings. It is important that the entire connection is fitted together for two planks outside the ship. If that is exactly right, they are all different, then one of the planks is attached and the other is provided with a lip seal, at the other end, with a third plank on the other side. This second plank is then attached and the entire length of the ship is finished. Planks on wooden ships were never lomger than 7 m.

The stern was made before the planks were attached. The planks go over it.

The very dark planking between the two wales were too dark. I removed them and replaced them with pear planks.

The part between the upper wales was finally closed. You can clearly see how the lip welds are placed between the planks.

One of the mysteries of such ships concerns the large number of gun ports, sixteen of them. If you count that there were 17 men on the ship, it is hard to imagine that there was a cannon behind every port. In those days, no seabattle was fought by firing all the guns at the same time from the broadside of the ship. Rather, we should see that as skirmishes with a few very light artillery pieces, at most 3 pounders, and muskets. The large number that appears in many prints from that time (not only in the account of Barents' voyage) with the mouth of a cannon from each gate should rather be seen as an interesting depiction of a ship.

It is not possible to find out how many cannons this early Pinas had, perhaps at most about four. They were small cannons on mostly three-wheeled carriages. Small fire mouths, rear loaders, which stood with a gaff in a hole on the side wall were also used.

My assumption is that those many gun ports could also have served well to row the ship in case of an emergency. The ship is very small and can certainly be moved with oars. Somewhere in De Veer's report it is also said that the ship is being rowed. Whether it means that it is pulled by a rowing boat or that it was rowed independently will never be clear.

tartane · April 8

The planks I use are made of pear wood and paranapine. If I want a plank of 3.5 mm wide, I take a board of that thickness and draw parallel lines every 1,5/2 mm. When I saw them out by hand with a fret-saw I have planks of a size of 1,5 x 3,5 mm. After filing and sanding, I am left with about a little more than a millimeter. I do have a fret-saw machine , but it's way too fast and inaccurate.

In the picture a number of planks, ready to be attached. In real life, those planks are often no longer than seven meters, so that also has to be taken into account.

When attaching to the trusses, it is a matter of fitting and measuring to get a good gradient in width. Especially at the bow it needs to be bent. I then hold that plank in boiling water (or sometimes in my mouth) for a while.

To show the caulking seams, the sides of the planks are smeared with pencil in the softest possible hardness. It makes a lot of mess when gluing, but when the whole thing is fixed and I start sanding/filing it all disappears and it looks beautiful. I use a lot of paper tape and elastic to get the planks in place. I never use nails.

The result after careful sanding of the hull. At the bow, the lower planks will become sometimes too narrow at the end. So two planks have to be replaced by one plank which can be seen here.

And here at the stern sometimes one plank had to end in two planks.

After that work, it was the deck's turn. First, a deck of 0.6 mm thick plywood, which would serve as an underground for the planks. The places of six king planks were drawn on it. In the deck, they provided a strong longitudinal connection over the rafters, and were about twice as thick as the deck planks. In the end, there is not much left to see because the top is sinked down between the deck planks.

On the deck, the places are cut out for the masts. The large hatch, which will soon consist of two grid hatches, has already been cut. There will be two more hatches in the deck, but since they will be closed I didn't make any holes for them.

What will also has to stand on the deck are the windlass, bitts and bitts with cross-pieces.

The windlass itself can function very well as an anchor bitt for small ships. Hoving places the windlass directly behind the foremast. In the Dutch city Harlingen a replica is built of this ship on which the windlass stands a long way further. In the 17th century description of shipbuilding from that time: "De Nederlandsche Scheepsbouwkonst" by Cornelius van Yk (1697) it is made clear on page 112 that no anchor bitt is needed for small ships and that the windlass can be used instead of a capstan.

Section of page 112 in the book.

Once the slab was secured under the deck, it was time to make the bulwarks. Because the bulwarks tilt slightly backwards everywhere, it formed a problem at the bow. I hadn't made any plywood struts there. On the bow I now made a mold that formed the right angle for the bulwark at the edges. To prevent the planks from gluing themselves to the mold, I covered it with cello tape. Wood glue does not adhere to them. Furthermore, the mould had to be able to slide backwards when unloading because the deck is wider there.

After attaching the planks of the bulwark, the mold could be removed. The two small holes that were needed to secure the mold later disappeared under the deck planks. The bulwark is three planks high, but the construction is sturdy enough to stand in that shape without a mold. This was followed by the removal of the plywood trusses. I broke it down with a pair of tongs. This was followed by a precise job of filing the stumps that remained in place on the same hight of the deck.

tartane · April 9

4

In order to meet reality as much as possible, it was necessary to make an elevation along the bulwark. In reality, a stringer ran along the struts, covered with a plank. I made that as a beam along the bulwark with the struts placed on top later. Underneath it ran the nibbling strake. At the top right you can see how I thought the deck planks were notched in a plank along the struts. Hovink thought that was exaggerated and stated that everything had to be done cheaply and quickly with those small ships, and advised to leave that out.

On the deck the six king planks, with the planks in between. The planks don't bend with the shape of the hull, but I made different widths that sometimes interlock. On excavated wrecks you never see nice neat straight planks like we do today. It was not important when a plank tapered as also can be seen everywhere in floors of old buildings in those days, and then often very wide. The tree from which they sawed the planks had not the same thickness everywhere.

The deck finished. There are three entrances to the deck below. In the middle the large hatch which will be equipped with gratings.

In front of the entrances to the cabin is an elevation with a slot underneath. Through that slot protruded the tiller in which at the end was a vertical stick operated by the helmsman, who stood on the elevation in front of the mizzen mast Behind it the hole for the mizzen mast. So the base of the mast was on that elevation.

It is not the well-known construction with a whipstaff. There is reason to believe that this was the case here, according to Hoving's research.

After applying the rahout, this phase was finished and the two superstructures above the rahout could be started, as supports for a large bend wooden lattice.

To keep checking the correct shape of the construction of the after castle and midship, I glued a cardboard mold to the first stanchions with a few dots of glue. On it I drew the shape. Since the stanchions above the deck end up above the rahout, slots had to be made through them.

The deck on the cabin is also equipped with planks. The mould has been removed here and the stanchions are ready to be planked on the outside.

The drawings in Gerrit de Veer's report show that geometric figures were drawn on the head knee, which was common on such ships of that time. Since I'm not going to paint the model, I had to do it in a different way, and I chose a cut relief.

First I copied the contours of the drawing, and sawed out the part.

Then I attached it to a board with double-sided tape. The object is so small that it is impossible to edit it without it being fixed on something.

First the drawing was applied in pencil, guided by the images of Gerrit de Veer and the interpretation of Ab Hoving. The pattern wasn't quite the same because otherwise it would be way too small.

With the following tools I cut it out. Two razor-sharp screwdrivers, a pin and a snap-off knife.

The head knee was then attached to the stem.

GrandpaPhil · April 9

Very cool!

tartane · April 10

5

The rudder was composed of two planks glued together with graphite in between.

I made the hinges from very thin brass plate, copper tube of 1.2 mm thick externally and copper wire of thick.0,8 mm

First the making of the tubes, with a length of about 1.2 mm.

Then the tails to be attached to the stern. They were bent into the right shape and fixed on a piece of wood of the same thickness as the stern. Through this an aluminum rod of about 1 mm thick. This rod should prevent solder from flowing into the tube. Aluminium cannot be soldered with normal soft solder. All this secured with tape and then soldered. Finally, excess solder was carefully filed away.

The pre-bent tails for the rudder were clamped on a piece of wood of the same thickness as the rudder and connected with a copper rod. This was soldered to the tails.

After filing away excess solder, the rod between the tails was cut loose and the individual parts were brought to the correct length.

This created the hinges ready to be attached to the rudder and stern

I never paint the iron parts (including the cannon barrels) black on my models. You don't see this anywhere on old images, always a kind of dark grey, REVELL matt 46.

Because it is far from certain what the workplace at the bow looked like, I had to rely on the rather different opinions of Hoving and de Weerdt.

As I mentioned before, the windlass could also be used to secure the anchor cable. The anchor bitt has therefore become superfluous and can therefore be omitted. That gives a lot more space at the bow. That extra space seems necessary to me because there had to be room on the deck of Barents' expedition ship to accommodate two boats. The boats could not be towed because they had to sail constantly between large ice floes. Moreover, Gerrit de Veer writes twice in his book that the boats had to be put out.

But there is always the possibility that both boats were stacked on top of each other.

Hoving omits the anchor bitt and puts the windlass close to the foremast. De Weerdt does place the anchor beting together with the windlass. As a result, there is not enough space for the two boats.

Because I make a model of a pinas, and not the specific ship of Barents, my model can suffice with one boat.

The situation on the photo above is entirely my responsibility.

Directly behind the foremast are dubble bitts with a cross-piece, with holes for a number of belaying-pins for attaching the various ropes that come from above and the front. In addition, there is a bittt, necessary for hoisting the yards in the foremast and the windlass.

Ab Hoving · April 10

Nice work Constant.

Baker · April 10

beautiful work

tartane · April 11

6

On the forcastle, and midships, I built a lattice as can be seen on this old picture of the battle at Bantam in 1601.

This lattice was a feature which was common on merchant ships at the time. It had to be a defense system in case the ship would be boarded by pirates. Initially, it was a net of heavy ropes, but later it became a wooden lattice.

I only know the Dutch name for this construction "boevennet". If you were to translate it, it would become "crook's net"

The holes in the grid were such that they could be used to poke with spikes to target the attacker on the net from below. Much later, this completely disappeared and the lattice became a permanent deck.

On each side I attached stanchions which had to support the lattice over the forcastle.

The lattice must then be placed on top of this, consisting of a number of curved beams with slats attached transversely.

The beams do not have the same width, but they must have the same height. Each beam had to be calculated and drawn separately, and sawn from thin pear wood. On the shelf next to it, the mold is made that corresponds to the tops of the stanchions.

To determine how high the lattice should be, a HO figure of a sailor was placed underneath before attaching the construction. It looks like a tall construction, but the headroom underneath is barely 170 cm in the middle.

In order to be able to determine the correct shape of the lattice midships, a helmsman was placed who had to be able to see just over the lattice

It turned out that the construction became almost horizontal at the rear and curved at the front. This shape was adopted on the rafters that were placed on the edges midships.

A ship of that size usually carried three anchors. I made two of them, of different sizes. They are sawn from a brass plate of 2 mm thick, on which I first glued the paper with the right circumference, and then filed it into the right shape. Both palms are made of very thin brass and cut into that shape. The parts are soldered together. This was simply not possible because of the conduction of the heat. A tool was made with a block of balsawood in which the contours of the bottom of the anchor were filed. By clamping the anchor on top of it and sliding the palms underneath, it became a solid unit that could easily be soldered.

After that, sticks were made from two halves of pear wood. Then I painted them in a color: Revell 46 matt. The cannon barrels were also given that colour. Both anchors were placed on the bow. Catheads wer not used at that time.

I didn't think it was realistic to equip all gun ports with cannons. Only two of them were fitted with sawn-off cannon barrels. Furthermore, I left two gates open, the others were closed.

Channels on which the deadeyes for the shrouds were mounted were not in use in that time. They were attached on a wale. As can be seen on illustrations.

tartane · April 12

7

Hatches with gratings.

The ship has two hatches with gratings, both of which are located amidships, separated by an intermediate beam.

B is the blue blade of a large hacksaw, with a slat to protect my fingers.

That saw has a thickness of just under 1 mm, which can be used to make a trench of width converted to the scale 1 : 87 is .7,5 cm

The holes in a grating should never be larger than 7.5 cm, otherwise the crew will break their ankles when they walk over them.

I made a guide through which I slided a bundle of slats (A) of 2.5 x 0.8 mm. Slots were then carefully sawn in them that neatly stop at the thickness of the two metal rings that are under the saw. If a little too much is sawn away on those rings, I could turn those rings in a different position

In this way, thin planks with slots are created, which glued together, form a grid.

The masts, bowsprit and the yards.

Nowadays we know almost everything about the rigging and masts of the ships after 1600. This is only partly the case with ships from before that time, to which this ship also belongs. For that reason, a few things had to be thought of myself, as if I were in the shoes of the skipper at the time. These will be discussed in the course of the story. The foremast and the mainmast are keel-stepped, the mizzenmast stops in the deck above the tiller. The mizzen mast is in fact pulled backwards when the shrouds are attached, because this type from before 1600 did not use a mizzenstay. This mast had to be supported backwards. I solved this by putting a wooden bobbin between the mast and the front of the cabin.

The three masts, the yards and the bowsprit are made of pear wood, cut and filed to the right thicknesses and tapered.

On 17th century ships, it was customary to make the topmasts extendable, a novelty that was applied at the end of the 16th century. This ship may have had sewn topmasts on the foremast and the mainmast. However, the replica that was built in Harlingen, and was completed in 2023, has extendable topmasts.

mars.jpg.a463033961dc8c76d7e442387401065d.jpg

The connection between the mast and the top mast is not extendable.

The angle of the bowsprit in relation to the waterline was accurately transferred to a piece of cardboard, after which the bowsprit was glued into the hole and support provided for this purpose.

In the photo above, the lack of the mizzenstay is clearly visible.

Apparently, a basket was attached to the top of the mizzenmast, which can be seen in the drawings of Gerrit de Veer.

I made the basket by attaching glued rope to a plastic pen, a ballpoint pen. Above and below the basket, the pen was covered with double-sided tape, to keep the ropes in place. After drying, the basket could be cut loose and a bottom, also made of rope, was added.

On the drawings of Gerrit de Veer it is not clearly visible whether a gammoning has been applied between the bowsprit and the head knee. In order to relieve the pull on the bowsprit upwards, this seems to be necessary, as later ships in particular show. In any case, I applied it, just like with the replica in Harlingen.

tartane · April 13

8

The rigging.

During rigging, it was a seemingly confusing tangle of wires.

This work often caused problems. This is the first square rigged ship I built. The previous ships I made were latin rigged. Their rigging is considerably simpler than the rigging of this ship and is also completely different.

The lower yards were lowered onto the railing, the rahout. This was no longer done in the 17th century, where the sails were tied to the yards just below the tops. The upper yards were lowered onto the tops.

On the model the mainsail on the mainmast is tied up, which was done at deck height and then the yard was hoisted up to below the top.

Since the 17th century, in order to moor the masts at a great height to prevent them from bending forward, the masts have had back stays, which were attached on the deck. On this ship, the back stays and the halyards for hoisting the topyards are still combined into one rope. Exactly how this worked is not entirely clear. Ab Hoving left it entirely up to me to find a solution.

The topyards were hoisted from the top. This is only possible with a haliard and a sheave in the mast. The halyard was fitted with a block and tacle was attached to port and starboard. Once the yard was hoisted, it automatically became a backstay, a rope that held the top of the mast in place at the back to prevent it from bending. So this is a possibility as it could have been made.

On large ships after 1600 it can be seen that there were ratlines on the shrouds everywhere.

On ships before 1600, there are only four shrouds with ratlines. Only from the deck to the tops of the foremast and mainmast. This can also be seen in the drawings of Gerrit de Veer.

These were attached about 40 cm apart. I glued the ratlines to the shrouds with superglue.

In fact, all the ropes on the model were far too thin compared to the rope available in model shops. This meant that the available rope had to be split again and again. This also meant that different thicknesses of rope had to be made.

I only used rope that had absolutely no plastic in it. This rope is not stretchable and can also be glued very well with wood glue. In addition, each piece of rope was pre-glued to prevent the fibers of the rope from sticking out and thus not attracting dust.

The running rigging was made of brown rope, the standing rigging was made black (tarred).

The smallest commercially available blocks had to be purchased. It became a search on the internet for the various suppliers. A number of blocks had to be made even smaller, which could be done by cutting and filing. The smallest blocks are located in the tops of the masts, in fact the blocks that were needed to hoist the flags. Some blocks were composed like the blocks at the ends of the yards. These were created after gluing two blocks together. Some of the blocks had a somewhat different shape, like the lift at the top of the mizzen yard. The first blocks from the tops that are needed for the lifts of the yards are also different. They had to be made manually from a piece of wood. I avoided to place round deadeyes. At that time, the deadeyes were triangular in shape. I filed round deadeyes in the right shape.

Making deadeyes and lanyards

Usually on shipmodels the deadeyes and lanyards are made when the lower deadeyes are already mounted. Because the scale of this ship is very small, I made the deadeyes and lanyards separately with the accompanying shrouds.

I designed the following method:

I sawed two equal sheets of plywood 2 mm thick with the same rectangular hole in the middle (A and B). The length of this hole is the length that corresponds to the total size of deadeyes with lanyards.

In the sheed B, two grooves come next to each other.

The chain plate will be attached to one deadeye and the shroud will be attached to a second deadeye. Both blocks are now placed in the grooves, picture C. On top of that comes the sheet without grooves, picture D. Both plates can now temporarily attached to each other with tape. Inside the opening, the threading can now begin and be secured.

After removing the tape, the ready-made deadeyes with lanyards appear (E).

They can now be attached to the model.

There are 38 deadeyes with lanyards of two different lengths attached to the model. So that requires sawing the plates twice again.

This ship was not yet equipped with channels, that only came a few years later. The chain plates, possibly ordinary rope, were attached to the a wale. Here I chose the method of replacing the chain plates with rope.

It took quite a bit of effort to get the thin strings through the tiny holes of the blocks. Often these passages still had to be drilled out with very small drills. The end of such a rope was reinforced with some superglue so that a thin sharp needle was created that could easily go through the hole.

The sails.

The sails were made of cotton that was as thin as possible. It was difficult to get to a fabric store there, so I went to a second hand store and dived between the women's blouses hung there. After some searching, under the hilarity of ladies present, and comparing, I found the thinnest possible white cotton that I was going to use for the sails.

The dimensions of the sails were copied from the drawings and coloured

The pattern of the strips was applied by means of a Rotring pin.

To imitate the bolt-rope on the sails, I glue rope against the side. I always use this method when making the sails of my models.

The photo shows how this works (on the sails of a chebec). I use regular wood glue. The edges of the sails are first provided with highly diluted glue, which should not shine after drying. So first make test pieces until the glue is so diluted that the shine is gone.

Apply the glue with a toothpick

After drying the glue, the outline must be carefully cut out, the glue will prevent the fabric from fraying

The pre-glued rope is then glued to it in pieces of about 30 mm by pressing it with a metal plate, for example a steel ruler. See also my website; www.constantwillems.nl

After most of the rigging and the sails were attached, I wanted to make a natural bulge of the sails. With a fan I blew the sails into a nice position and then added hairspray with a spray can. After some time I stopped with the fan and the sails remained in a natural position.

tartane · April 14

9

The boat.

Like most ships at the time, a pinas also had a boat. It is often claimed that these were towed, but on the open sea in stormy weather they could easily be lost. So usually they were on board, and were only put out when necessary.

First I made the trusts out of thin plywood and glued it together.

The planks were attached to it of thin ash veneer, after which a few trusses of plywood were very carefully removed from it

A fore and a rear deck were then put in, and the last plywood trusses disappeared

Finally, the real trusses were glued in and the bottom and rowing benches were installed, as well as the rudder. Finally came the oars, made of very thin toothpicks. By flattening the end with a hammer and providing it with glue, the blades could be formed.