Grand Banks Dory by palmerit - Midwest Products - 1:12

[palmerit]

I am starting to build another Dory, this one from Midwest Products (a division of Model Shipways / Model Expo). I think I read that Model Shipways / Model Expo bought the designs for the Midwest Products kits and have been reissuing them with better materials. I think I also read somewhere that the old Midwest Products kits might have used balsa wood - this one uses basswood - but I don't know how long ago that was.

 

I'm planking my Ranger slowly and researching and reading how to rig my Sherbourne. I didn't want to start another complicated kit and remembered that I had bought this kit in my buying frenzy during a Model Expo sale in the fall.

 

It will be interesting to see how this build differs from the other Dory I build. Unlike the other Dory, this one is larger scale (1:12 instead of 1:24) and has a sail. These easy kits can be completed quickly and let me try out different approaches that I likely will be able to use on more complicated kits, and maybe be able to make progress more quickly on those than I might if I had just plunged into larger complicated kits more quickly.

Edited Wednesday at 06:12 AM by palmerit

[palmerit]

There are a couple other build logs of the Midwest Dory (more of the Model Shipways Dory, which is part of the Shipwright Series; there is also a Bluejacket Dory):

 

Edited Wednesday at 06:24 AM by palmerit

[palmerit]

And this had some photos of a real Dory:

 

[Kenchington]

Your build will be interesting to watch, Palmerit. And I agree that photos of full-size banks dories will help.

 

One of Capt. Kelso's gave me the idea of how to add a mast step to my version of the Model Shipway's kit. Looking at them again now, I am struck by the "snub nose" appearance where everything comes together at the top of the stem. I chose to give mine a more elegant stemhead but the stubby look is more realistic: More robust when banging against the side of the schooner and less likely to get hooked up when the dories are stacked. In their 1887 account of the "salt bank" cod fishery, Goode and Collins even made an obscure mention of a boot heel being nailed on -- bit like the old tractor tires that could once be seen on the bows of tugs!

 

There are lots of other photos of modern dories available on the WWW. The Lunenburg Dory Shop (https://www.doryshop.com) is a good place to start. You could even come to Nova Scotia for a week and join in the building of a full-size one! In contrast, photographs of the real thing in use in the banks fisheries are harder to come by. John Clayton made a few trips to sea around 1950, and has left us a large collection of images. Many were published in John Garland's 1985 "Adventure: Last of the Great Gloucester Dory-Fishing Schooners" (with at least one later edition). Before that, Frederick Wallace made a few trips on Nova Scotian schooners pre-1914. A selection of his photographs are in M. Brook Taylor's "A Camera on the Banks" (Goose Lane Editions, Fredericton 2006).

[robert952]

Tagging along for the ride. 

[palmerit]

The instructions and other build logs seem to require using the plans to line up pieces for gluing. So I took the plans to the FedEx near my office and had a couple copies made for around $5 (I probably only needed one copy). 

[palmerit]

Scribing lines from the plans onto the bottom plank. 

[palmerit]

The instructions show the layout of sheet #1 and shade in the transom and stern cleat but the actual sheet is organized in a different way. 

[palmerit]

Instructions say “there are two, Number Two (#2), die-cut sheets”. There’s only one #2 with twice as many parts. 

[palmerit]

The stern and bow knees are made by gluing two pieces together. After drying overnight I sanded off the char and glued the stern knee to the stern transom. The instructions for the front stem knee require measuring and marking two dots 1/8” inches from the front edge of the stem. But the stem is in total 1/8” wide. So I’m guessing it should be 1/16”. The instructions unfortunately don’t specify how far from the top and bottom to mark these two dots. 

[palmerit]

Gluing the transom to the bottom. 

[Kenchington]

7 hours ago, palmerit said:

The instructions for the front stem knee require measuring and marking two dots 1/8” inches from the front edge of the stem. But the stem is in total 1/8” wide. So I’m guessing it should be 1/16”. The instructions unfortunately don’t specify how far from the top and bottom to mark these two dots. 

 

 

What a strange way to mark a bevel line! I suppose they have skipped the need for a separate template by shaping the curve of the stem to match that of the bottom boards, near the bow. It may not matter just where you measure the distance in from the edge of the stem, if the curve of the bottom is steady over the whole area near the bow. (It won't, of course, be steady throughout the length of the dory.)

 

But I would think long and hard before assuming that 1/8 was an error for 1/16. They may be telling you that the upper part of the stem needs to be bevelled to a triangular section. Get that wrong now and there will be trouble later.

[Kenchington]

7 hours ago, palmerit said:

You have nicely photographed something that I worried over with the Model Shipways dory and I'm still not sure of the answer.

 

When you have bevelled and faired the bottom boards, transom and knee, ready to receive the garboards, the aftermost, lowest point must be one of three things: 1: A narrow flat formed by the lowest point of the transom, reaching to the underside of the bottom and covering the end of the bottom boards; 2: A similar flat formed by squaring off the very end of the bottom boards, with the transom on top (and also squared off); or else 3: A point, where the tips of the bottom and the transom just meet. I think that full-size dories are built on their bottoms, so I would doubt #1 in the prototype, though that may not matter in a model.

 

What might matter is if an offset from the kit-designer's intent caused later problems when bringing the planking to the sides of the transom.

 

Your kit has a squared lower end to the transom, in its laser cut. (The Model Shipways one comes to a point.) You have aligned it so that the inboard face of the transom meets the tip of the bottom, which will mean bevelling the transom away to nothing at its lower end. I think I might have set the transom and its knee a little further forward, so that the outboard face just meets the tip of the bottom (meaning that the outboard face of the transom would be bevelled away to nothing but the inboard would still have width). But I still don't know which would be "right", let alone which the kit-designer intended!

 

Whichever it should be, better to be sure before proceeding any further.

 

Trevor

[palmerit]

1 hour ago, Kenchington said:

Whichever it should be, better to be sure before proceeding any further.

Do you mean where the knee is attached relative to the point at the bottom?

 

The instructions provide a drawing that I tried to follow. 

[Kenchington]

Nice instructions! That diagram would have been useful in the Model Shipways version.

 

Looks like you are spot on with the kit-designer's intentions, which is what matters most, I suspect. But there's going to be a whole lot of wood to remove when bevelling.

[palmerit]

Anyone have pointers on paint color options for a Dory? 
 

The Midwest kit doesn’t come with paint. I might have some paints I can use, but if I want some new colors I’d like to order so I have them in hand when I’m ready to paint. 

[Kenchington]

Dories could be any colour you want, though far and away the most common is on overall coat of some variant of "dory buff", with a streak of contrasting colour along the rail -- most often a green for some reason.

 

Or are you looking for specific paint brands and colour designations?

[palmerit]

2 hours ago, Kenchington said:

Or are you looking for specific paint brands and colour designations?

Just wondering what color combinations make sense. I usually use Vallejo air brush paints.

[Capt. Kelso]

Looks like the old Bluejacket Kit I built several years ago. I have built a couple of boats and used "The Dory Model Book" by Harold Payson for reference. There are different versions of the Dory, Clam, Banks, etc.., which did not have a standard color scheme. So, if you are building a working Dory or recreational version your choice of paint color is open. Consider the color scheme of the Midwest Sea Bright Dory Lifeboat (I built that as well), sometimes a combination of bright colors with white makes the model stand out.