Norwegian sailing pram by Kenchington – Model Shipways – 1:12

[SaltyScot]

You did a very nice job with that sail, Trevor, your usual meticulous approach has paid off. I shall red through your recent posts when I have more than 10 minutes to spare (we are into our house reno again now......)

[Kenchington]

Thank you, Mark! A very different technique to your lovely Endeavour sails, with a different final appearance.

 

Now, if only we had a way to make model sails really look like:

[druxey]

But we do! See SeaWatchBooks:

 

https://seawatchbooks.com/products/swan-iv-sail-making-supplement-from-the-revised-and-expanded-edition-by-david-antscherl

 

 

[Kenchington]

38 minutes ago, druxey said:

But we do!

Not as they are when full of wind and pulling. Or has someone been keeping their art hidden from me? 😀

[druxey]

Same principles, but formed over a curved surface and 'fixed' with acrylic matt medium.

[Kenchington]

5 hours ago, druxey said:

Same principles, but formed over a curved surface and 'fixed' with acrylic matt medium

I will have to go in search of examples!

[Kenchington]

Standing rigging -- FAILURE !!!

 

Since my last progress report, I have finished the pram's standing rigging but the result is far less than "satisfactory". I have got the detailing quite nice but the overall effect is way off. And that's a stupid mistake to make.

 

I thought I had figured out a solution to the challenges but it hasn't worked, so I'll explain what I have done -- not so that others can follow my path but as a warning, in the hope that the next builder of the kit may succeed where I failed.

 

With mast, sail and one end of each piece of standing rigging prepared, the first task was to get the mast temporarily stepped, so that I could measure the required lengths. Playing that game with a 20ft mast of solid pine (!), I attach the shrouds loosely, then get the mast up while maintaining tension on the forestay, finally adjusting and tensioning everything. I figured a similar approach would do. So I caught the ends of the shrouds under a rubber band, stepped the mast and clipped the forestay around the mast and over its cleat. Then clipped the sail more or less in place and adjusted everything until I was happy with the result:

The forestay largely sets the rake of the mast (though pulling in opposition to the shrouds) but the shrouds alone determine any tilt to port or starboard. I figured (1) that I could live with more error in the rake than with any tilt, and (2) getting the shrouds both equal to one another and the right length to set tension in the rigging once the forestay was finalized was too much. So the sequence was one shroud to the right length for the desired rake, then the other to exactly match, and only then the forestay made to the length needed for reasonable tension. So I moved one shroud from its rubber band to its chainplate and marked there.

 

So far so good, then the trouble started. The forestay had fed through the hole in its hook without trouble, so I figured the shroud would too. Wrong! In fighting with it, I pulled on the end when only two strands were through the hole, wrecking the line. Smoothed that down but the mark was lost. Got everything together and went back to the model to re-check lengths but with less care than in the above image. "Spliced" and "served" the end of the shroud. Then carefully matched the length of the second shroud and attached that to its hook too. So proudly returned the rig to the model ... only to see:

Way too much forward rake! That will completely ruin the appearance of the finished model. Nothing to be done, however. Attempting to cut away that rigging and start over would only make things worse. I still don't know what went wrong. Maybe the shroud slipped slightly before I got it glued. Nor do I know how to avoid the same problem another time, if I did do it over (which I won't).

 

So ... Put that down to a learning experience and persevere with the forestay.

 

With that hooked in place at the bow transom knee and looped around the mast, passing over its cleat. I marked where I wanted the glue "splice" to fall. I went for a very large loop (1) because I could , (2) because I feared that I might have to slip the finished loop up the mast, passing over both (horned) cleats near the foot, but also (3) because I realized that the halliard needs to pass through the forestay loop. The instructions don't have that but it ought to be done on a full-size boat of the pram's design, so on a model too.

 

Most dinghies have forestay and shrouds meeting the mast together, at the "hounds", often with a jib halliard just below. If the mainsail is Bermudan, it will rise higher but its halliard will likely run down inside a hollow mast. Or else the belaying point of the halliard may be offset to one side or the other. The pram has the halliard sheave very near the masthead and the halliard cleat on the centreline of the mast. The yard hangs below the shrouds (and far enough below that it can swing freely from side to side, when the sheet is eased) but the forestay is (oddly) set much lower still, presumably so that the forward end of the yard does not get caught between mast and forestay. Yet that leaves the forestay and the halliard cutting across one another (on the centreline of the mast), leading to friction, wear and failure.

 

Simple solution: Lengthen the forestay loop and reave the halliard through it. 

 

With the marks made, I removed the forestay from the model and "served" the whole of the loop -- as I would in full-size to prevent wear of the stay against the mast. Then I re-assembled everything, glued the "splice" with the forestay in place, such that I could control the tension in the rig, and even "served" over that "splice" with the mast stepped and rigged:

That much went well, even if the "serving" is too lumpy. However, even perfection in the forestay could not resolve the excess length of the shrouds:

It won't look quite as bad once the boom is rigged and the tack of the sail brought abaft the mast. But a huge disappointment all the same 😭

 

 

Trevor

 

[JacquesCousteau]

Definitely a tricky mast to rig with the upright angle controlled solely by the rigging! While it's certainly frustrating, and it's of course up to you what you do, I'd suggest redoing the shrouds and stays to get a result you're satisfied with. The rest of the model has turned out quite nice, including additions like the served rigging not usually seen on this model, and it seems to me like it would not take that much time, relatively speaking, to bring the standing rigging up to the same standard.

 

It sounds like part of the issue was in setting the shrouds before the fore stay. Maybe setting the forestay first would help? Another option may be to fudge things a bit (or let's call it personalizing the boat) by making a new, wider thwart from scratch and drilling a hole in the midline to create a more stable foundation for the mast. I did something similar on my Dory build, which I added a sail to, but I'm not sure if it would work on this particular model.

 

Anyway, it's your model, just thought I'd add my two cents.

[palmerit]

I couldn’t have got the mast on my Pram without having Quadhands. I’m sure there’s some way to do it without those, and the instructions describe it, but there was just no was I could do it. I suppose I could have the mast with my mouth or a nostril. 
 

I started with the single line going to the front, then did the two lines on the sides. 

[Kenchington]

Thank you for your thoughts, gentlemen!

 

6 hours ago, palmerit said:

I couldn’t have got the mast on my Pram without having Quadhands.

At one point, probably after reading your build log, I thought I would get a set of those. Then I thought I was clever enough to manage without. I was wrong and you had a better way.

 

7 hours ago, JacquesCousteau said:

I'd suggest redoing the shrouds and stays to get a result you're satisfied with

It wasn't a model-driven delay (I had some work to get on with at my keyboard) but I ended up with a 24-hour gap between doing the shrouds and getting serious about the forestay. Plenty of time to decide how to respond to the mistake. It wasn't that I lacked either time or materials for fixing the problem. My concern was how to attach replacement shrouds to the two tiny brass fittings on the mast. Joining shroud to brass then brass to mast had been OK but that was enough experience to make me doubt that I could get new shrouds into place without making everything a whole lot worse.

 

Once I decided to press on, accept the rake and complete the forestay, the model's fate was sealed. I can't raise the enthusiasm to re-do the entire standing rigging.

 

7 hours ago, JacquesCousteau said:

It sounds like part of the issue was in setting the shrouds before the fore stay. Maybe setting the forestay first would help?

Maybe. With the shrouds held under that rubber band, in lieu of the Quadhands?

 

Thinking about it now, with the experience of completing the forestay while it was in place, on the model, I wonder whether I would not have done better to CA glue the three ends while I had the mast's rake where I wanted it, as in the top image in my previous posting.

 

I have gone years hating and fearing hardware-store CA, which never once worked for me and always created a mess. I am beginning to appreciate the hobby-store high-viscosity version but I am still wary of having drips of it anywhere near the model. So I tried marking the first shroud for length, taking the mast off the model, then gluing the "splice". By the time that I got to the forestay, I was brave enough to take a single drip of CA to the stay where it was on the model, while holding that to the length I wanted. If I had done that with each of the shrouds, then removed the mast and "served" over the glue, maybe all would have gone well.

 

Ah well! This was always intended to be a learning experience and I am learning ... sometimes the hard way 😀

 

 

Trevor

 

 

[JacquesCousteau]

CA glue is definitely useful for rigging, although I have seen others use shellac or other varnishes instead. The brush-on kind or the gel are easier to control than the tubes of liquid. You can dab it on the end of rigging line to keep it unraveling (especially useful for scale rope that can unravel when cut), and can cut the glued portion at an angle to get a sharp-tipped "needle" in the line for threading. Sometimes you also have to drill out the holes in metal fittings to get the line through, too.