18 ft Cutter by - Dr PR - Vanguard Models - 1:64

[Dr PR]

I have trimmed or removed some of the MDF bulkheads. A couple were shaped to look like ribs. This may seem rather anal since they will be hidden under the floor boards. But you can see the ribs through the cracks in the floorboards if you look at the right angle. After the seats and other parts are attached you won't be able to see much of them!

 

I coated the inside of the hull with a clear acrylic sealer in preparation for painting.

 

The forward deck grating has been trimmed to fit between the ribs. The edges of the center floorboards piece were beveled so it sits flat between the ribs.

 

The small aft grating has been glued in place. It was a bit too wide fore to aft, probably because the space was a bit narrower due to the angles of the bulkhead and transom after gluing.

 

I am procrastinating on gluing the deck pieces into place until after the inside of the hull has been painted.

 

 

I jumped ahead in the instructions looking for things that can be done before painting the boat. The instructions say to use a couple of spare planks to make the wales. What spare planks? Fortunately there is a suitable narrow strip in the 1 mm pear sheet that was between the planks and seat support/ribs.

 

The wales were bent in place on the hull using the plank bending tool. Then they were glued in place. Here I went over to the dark side and used a drop of CA gel to attach the front end of the wale to the stem. After this set I used Titebond glue to attach the rest of the strip to the hull. The Titebond takes about a minute to set up enough to hold the strips in place, and this gives time to position them.

 

The top of the wales were positioned even with the bottom of the top planking strip.

 

 

 

I decided to add a cap rail to the top of the planking and ribs. This isn't mentioned in the instructions, but desalgu added them when he built this kit for his Dutchess of Kingston build. Instead of cutting rowlock positions into the top plank he added thole pins to the cap rails. However May's Boats of Men-of-War says cutters had an additional plank above what was normal for other boats to increase the freeboard, and rowlock openings were cut into this plank so the oars would not ride too high and make rowing more difficult.

 

Two extra seat support strips were used to make the cap rails. I made a bending fixture with some pins driven into a piece of scrap wood. These pieces were bent flat across the wide dimension. Again, they were wetted and shaped with the plank bending tool several times until they held their shape.

 

 

 

Rowlock openings will be cut through the cap rail and the top plank - cutter style. Here is a photo showing the cap rails and wales after gluing in place. The aft ends will be trimmed after the glue has set.

 

Edited Thursday at 05:33 AM by Dr PR

[DocRob]

A very interesting thread, Phil and a fine build as well. I built one of these Vanguard cutters as a boat for my Duchess of Kingston, which was my first serious wooden ship build. It was delicate for a beginner like me, time consuming, but somehow entertaining and a nice challenge. I haven´t dug that deep into realistic planking and was very happy, how my little bugger came out. For my Sphinx build, I ordered PE replacements, as there are three boats to build and that would be too repetitive for me. 



Cheers Rob

[Billpitts]

 I found drawings and scantlings and a step by step log on building a plug, framing, planking and where to find scantlings so will give a scratch build a go.

Thanks for all your input.

Bill

 

[Dr PR]

Installation of the deck panels was next.

 

 

Neither the front or rear grating pieces fit down to the MDF bulkhead parts, but were "floating" in the air, suspended by points that touched the hull planking.

 

I added three thin support blocks for the front grating and one for the rear piece. The gratings will rest on these supports.

 

The foremost of the front blocks and the block at the rear serve dual purposes. In addition to supporting the gratings they also provide wood for eyebolts to "screw" into. The boat will hang from the boat tackle on the stern davits, and hooks on the lower blocks will engage these eye bolts.

 

 

 

Here are photos of the deck plates in place. Arrows in the right hand photo mark the fore and aft eyebolts for the boat tackle.

 

 

 

The seats were next. The front three presented no problems. In order for the middle seat's mast support to be positioned over the mast foot in the photo etch deck planks I had to notch the ends a bit on both sides to fit around ribs. Then I spaced the fore and aft thwarts about the same distance from the center piece. The forward seat also had to be notched to fit around ribs.

 

The large aft seat was a pain in the posterior! I mentioned earlier that the thin seat at the front broke along the grain while I was removing laser char. It broke twice more while I was trying to notch the piece to fit over the ribs. This piece was also too narrow at the aft end to fit properly into the hull when resting on the seat support strips.

 

I decided to make a new part from 0.03125 inch (1/32 inch, 0.8 mm) thick plywood. I made a paper template to fit the shape of the hull interior and used this to cut the shape from the plywood. Then it was just a matter of repeated shaping and test fitting until I got a part that fit correctly into the hull, resting on the seat support strips. Then the center part was cut out. This 0.8 mm plywood piece is thinner than the 1 mm kit part, but is MUCH stronger. It flexes without breaking. Maybe it is too flexible, so I glued a cross piece under the front seat to stiffen it a bit. This support fits between the seat support strips that run along the inside of the hull.

 

 

The majority of the plans in May's Boats of Men-of War have a seat across the back of the boat. I put this in the new rear seat piece. However, I will have to cut out a notch for the boat tackle hook to pass through to engage the eye bolt in the boat. Most of the plans also included the relief at the rear sides of the forward transverse seat, like the part in the kit. I assume this was to make room for the legs of the rower. I will probably carve these into the part before installing it.

 

 

I used shellac to seal the wood in the seats. I thought I would leave them like that for a bit of variety. But the unpainted plywood stands out like a sore thumb so I will paint the seats the same brown as the boat interior after they are glued in place.

 

You can also see a recurring problem I have had with the photoetch brass deck pieces. The acrylic paint I am using does not adhere well to the brass (it was not etched prior to painting). Just touching the parts will cause the paint to lift off. But after the seats and other gear are in place the brass parts will be protected.

 

Note: You could avoid most of the problems I had with the rear seat piece by just gluing it into the hull as it came from the 1 mm pear wood sheet. Then the ribs could have been fashioned to fit into place tightly against the top of the seat. This would avoid all the handling necessary for cutting the rib notches that increases the probability of the wood breaking along the grain. If you paint the seats you wouldn't need to remove the laser char.

Edited yesterday at 04:37 AM by Dr PR

[Dr PR]

The boat is almost completed except for cutting the rowlocks and painting.

 

I finished the aft seat and then installed all of the seats.

 

Knees were glued at the stern inside the hull planking and transom.

 

Eight small knees were placed at the ends of the seats. These are nice details, but very small. The kit includes sixteen pieces and that should tell you something! I lost two while sanding off the char and bit of the tab from the laser cut - tweezers twisted and launched them into the matrix somewhere.

 

Because I added the cap rail I had to trim the tops of the knees a bit to fit under the rail.

 

The details in this kit are very nice. The boat will really enhance the topsail schooner model.

 

 

Now I need to do some more research. I still have the rudder to deal with. Note: in these photos the rudder is not glued in place, but is just held in position for the photos by the friction of the single tab near the bottom. So it is not aligned perfectly.

 

The detailed straps are nice, but the design assumes the rudder will be attached to the boat. But would it be if it was hanging over the side/stern from davits? Or would the rudder be removed and stowed in the boat? If I don't attach the rudder I will need to make the straps and gudgeons on the transom and hull. And I will need to make the pintles on the rudder.

 

The tiller on the rudder also poses a challenge. If the rudder is attached according to the instructions the tiller extends over the eyebolt for the boat falls and will interfere with the boat tackle. I can shorten the tiller a bit, but it already looks too short to my eye.

 

 

 

The kit provides six wooden oars, two photo etch boat hooks, and the neatest tiny boat anchor I have seen.

 

Would these items have been stowed in a boat hanging over the stern on davits? Following seas likely would pound the boat occasionally, and sometimes flood it. This could wash things out of the boat.

 

What to do, what to do ... ?

 

The ruler shows the size of the boat (3 7/16 inch or 87 mm) without the rudder.

 

 

 

 

Edited 14 hours ago by Dr PR

[Coyote_6]

This will be interesting.  I would think aft davits is ready to go and rudder installed?  Do the rudders on ship's boats lock like they do on the ship herself?

 

The detail is amazing for 87mm!  Very nice boat Phil.

Edited 15 hours ago by Coyote_6

[Dr PR]

Steve's last post on his Prince build reminded me of the midshipman figure for my topsail schooner.

 

This is an Amati 35mm figure - about 5 1/2 feet (1.7 meters) with hat at 1:48 scale .

 

A 14 foot boat is pretty small!

Edited 14 hours ago by Dr PR

[Dowmer]

Phil, my .02, if your ship was at sea, the boat was probably stowed inboard and only moved to the davits when nearing shore. If it is stowed on the davits and not being readied for use, then the oars would be lashed together in a bundle and secured inside the boat.  Same for the rudder, stowed inside the boat to protect it from seas.  If you were lowering the boat in an emergency you wouldn’t want to be searching for oars and rudder etc in a hurry.  You would want them inside.  To be honest, it probably had a canvas cover over it as well, so all that detail wouldn’t be seen.  
 

If you want to show the detail, then I would rig it as if they are getting ready to lower it away and use it for sea and anchor detail. 

[Dr PR]

Your advice is worth a lot more than $0.02!

[Landlubber Mike]

That's a nice little kit and you're doing a great job on it.  I might have to look into these for some of my wooden builds.  Thanks for posting the separate build log!

[Kenchington]

1 hour ago, Dr PR said:

A 14 foot boat is pretty small!

Too small for a man to stand up in: Tell him to sit down and stop acting like an idiot!

[Kenchington]

1 hour ago, Dowmer said:

Same for the rudder, stowed inside the boat to protect it from seas.

I agree and not only for protection from seas: You don't want any of the ship's other gear bashing a boat's rudder, nor the obstruction of the rudder when moving other gear around. Come to that, when putting a boat overboard, using tackles from the mainstay and yard-arm, you don't want anything sticking out and making it even harder to avoid getting hung up on the shrouds, braces and all else.

 

Rudders and tillers neatly shipped, while a boat is aboard, annoy me nearly as much as flags streaming aft while a ship is sailing with her yards squared. Of course, any model is a stylized, simplified representation of full-size reality. Hence any model builder is free to represent that reality as he (or she) pleases. But some things still grate me the wrong way 😖

 

Brady's "Kedge Anchor" ought to have some comment on how boats were stowed in USN practice, but I can't find much in my reprint. He does say that the bo's'un must inspect the boats on the booms every day after sunset. Also he recommended that, in the tropics, the boats should be uncovered after sunset "in order that they may benefit by the dew and air", the covers being "made up" and placed in the bow of the boat -- all of which strongly suggests that, under other circumstances, the boats were covered, as Dowmer suggested!

 

 

Trevor

[Dr PR]

More good advice! Thanks!

 

I like the suggestion of rigging the boat as if it were ready for sea and anchor detail. On the schooner model I have rigged one anchor as if it has just been fished, so the ship would be at sea and anchor detail (if that's what they called it in the early 1800s in the Revenue Service). The boat would be hanging from the davits ready to launch - or just recovered. The ship has most of the sails rigged so I think of it as having just weighed anchor and getting underway.

 

The schooner has no space on deck for boats, not even a small one like this. But I suspect the real vessels had more than one boat. It was common to tow some or all of the boats rather than carry them on board. Some ships had booms rigged on the sides at the channels and I thought of doing that but I have seen no drawings or paintings showing this for a "Baltimore clipper" topsail schooner. But I have seen several plans and paintings showing a small boat hanging from davits at the stern like I am doing on the model.