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

[SaltyScot]

Sometimes taking a nice break empowers us with new ideas, Trevor. Stepping away is a healthy thing! She looks sharp through my eyes, sir.

[JacquesCousteau]

Very nicely done!

[MBerg]

Nice work! Equally glad to see you get back to your pram and sort that rigging out with something you're happy with.

[Kenchington]

Thank you or your support, gentlemen!

 

After snatching some brief time to work on it, the standing rigging fix is now done:

 

I will have to make changes to the mainsheet and its rope horse, but that will best wait until the tiller and rudder are done. The shorter, tighter horse might complicate repeated test placings of the rudder/tiller combination.

 

I resumed work on the tiller last night, so progress picking up a bit.

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Tiller finally completed -- only seven months after I started on it!

 

I explained the logic of my chosen solution back on post #89, so no reason to repeat any of that. However, discussion on another MSW thread through the summer got me thinking, so I will state one more point:

 

When building a model of a specific vessel, Nelson's Victory for example, we should really strive to represent that one prototype as she was at some stage in her career. Heading off into fantasies of how she might have been, even though she wasn't, isn't what most of us are about. However, the pram isn't one boat but a design from which many full-size boats have been built. I am not trying to replicate any one of them specifically. Rather, I am aiming for a model of a boat as I would want her if I had one to the pram's design. I haven't tried personalizing the hull but I have modified the rigging, much as I would with a full-size boat. As it happens, my 22fter arrived with a short stick for a tiller, similar to the one in the pram kit. That had met the previous owner's needs but was dangerously inadequate when sailing in the sea breezes in my harbour. I added an extension right away and, as soon as I could, stepped up to the much-more-elegant tiller that the builder offered as an optional extra on new boats:

 

The pram needs a different shape of tiller, to suit her different rudderhead and the angle of her rudder hangings, but I have gone for a similar concept.

 

 

Since this was a substantial departure from the kit design, I needed to begin with a card template, to check the length and curvature needed, if the end result was to match the ergonomics of a solo pram sailor sitting astride the midships thwart:

 

Then it was time to rough out a scrap of hardwood -- in my case a bit of jatoba, as I have oddments left over from a (full-size) boat project:

 

Back in the spring, I got some way forward with shaping that but the Dremel cut too deeply at one point and I gave up for the summer. Maybe I should have started over but, in recent days, I decided to press on, even though the final tiller would end up thinner than I would have liked (about 1 inch diameter, if scaled up). After a whole lot of hand sanding, I ended up with a near-final shape, matched to the rudder, though with extra wood left at the rudder end as I could not be sure where the side pieces would lie:

Also in the spring, I made two side pieces, following the kit's design but longer and in jatoba.

 

I checked the alignment of rudder and tiller on the model (then checked again, and once again). Happy with that and to be sure that everything would line up, I taped the rudder and tiller down:

then slipped a brass rod loosely into the hole in one side piece, placed that in the notch in the rudderhead and lined everything up. Oily tropical hardwoods can best be glued as though they were solid plastic -- meaning CA. A dollop of that on the tiller (avoiding the rudder) and the side piece was pressed into place. Once set, the whole thing could be flipped over, taped down again and the second side piece added in the same way. That gave me:

 

Next was a whole lot more sanding, not least to make the top and bottom surfaces of the main tiller and its side pieces flush. Also to smooth the junction between those into a prettier curve. Then I tried putting annealed brass rod through the holes in the side pieces, following the kit instructions. Putting rod into holes was easy but when I tried to make heads out of the stumps of the rod, I just bent the metal and cracked the wood. So I fastened a short bit of rod into place with CA, filed down the metal and sanded the glue off the wood. With a whole lot more sanding, shaping and a hole drilled for the tiller-extension's pivot, I got to:

That got its fancy end dipped in white paint and the rest wiped down with tung oil, bringing out the rich colour of the jatoba.

 

Meanwhile,. I took the kit's tiller extension but did not even try inserting the brass crossbar as the instructions want it done. The diameter of the provided rod is very nearly as large as the thickness of the basswood extension, leaving no room for error and very little strength. If the pieces were double their thickness, I would have fitted a wooden crosspiece with a half-lap joint instead, but that was beyond me too. So I gouged a slight groove into the very end of the extension and glued a bit of brass rod there, using CA again.

 

My attempt to form a head on the next piece of rod was as unsuccessful as the previous one had been, so I made the extension pivot from a brass nail, glued into its hole, cut, filed and painted over. That gave me a finished tiller unit that looks like:

And in place on the model:

 

Not as neat and nice as I had it in my mind's eye -- but very little turns out that well! Anyway, I'm happy with the final outcome, not least it's colour contrast with the rest of the pram.

 

Now I have oars to finish, running rigging to tidy up and then I think the model will (finally!!!) be finished.

 

 

Trevor

 

Edited 16 hours ago by Kenchington

[JacquesCousteau]

Very nice work personalizing the tiller!

 

As to your point about accuracy to a specific ship vs. accuracy to a generic type, I have to admit that I prefer the latter style. Figuring out the range of possibilities and choosing which option I want to depict and why seems more fun than trying to pin everything down to exactly how it was, at least at the moment. Who knows, though, maybe after a few more builds I'll change my mind.