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 6 hours ago 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