Gaff sloop of unknown design c. 1910 by Bedford - RESTORATION - possibly to RC

[Bedford]

Well, this is my second restoration of a model donated to the Lake Macquarie Classic Boatshed. This has been sitting on the Mezzanine for a few years and the lines are just so beautiful I couldn't leave her to be eventually discarded. Did I need another model project at this point, not really but here it is.

 

We have no idea what she is modeled after but it's in the style of the Fife sloops of the early 1900's and since it has a bowsprit I'm thinking gaff rigged so I'm taking very loose inspiration from the William Fife III  designed "Mariska"

 

It will be "stand off scale" as we used to say n the aero-modelling field. as it may end up with radio control added but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

 

The hull is 1460 long, so quite large and planked in Oregon which was varnished in what appears to be the old Estapol, that had to go so a hot air gun and scrapers got most of that off with the rest removed by scraping and sanding. This process revealed the truth about her beauty, it's very much skin deep. Some of the planks have been sanded to within 0.02mm of their lives in order to achieve fair lines, you can see light through them! What this means is that whether or not I add RC she's going to have to be fibregassed so I've ordered some 30gsm cloth. Hopefully I can get a good enough finish to allow varnishing over the 'glass but I may need to paint below the waterline anyway to cover water damage and poor fairing of strakes at the stern post.

 

I can't reinforce the strakes internally as it's quite roughly finished and I'd have to sand back a thick layer of black paint which is over varnish, I'm not prepared for that debarkle and chances are I'd go through the thin strakes anyway. The internal framing is quite substantial and, in places, broken so I'll have to do something to stabilise that and possibly create the room for auxilliary drive should she become an RC sail boat.

 

Anyway, on to the pics. Oh, and the tabernacle is decidedly agricultural for a model with some beautiful features so it's going.  

 

 

[Bedford]

Some more pics

Edited October 8 by Bedford

[druxey]

Lovely lines and worth resurrecting!

[Jim Lad]

I agree with Druxey wholeheartedly. She's well worth bringing back to life.

 

John

[ccoyle]

18 hours ago, Bedford said:

planked in Oregon

 

Do you mean Oregon pine? That is a regional name for Douglas fir. It was very commonly used in West Coast ship building, it being a very large and straight-trunked tree, which made it a prime source of long, straight-grained planks. Most of the West Coast schooners that have been in the news here on the forum lately were built of Doug fir.

[Bedford]

Yeah, we in Aus tend to shorten names but Oregon Pine aka Douglas Fir or as our Irish shipwright calls it, Irish Pine - O'regon

[Bedford]

This might be a long shot but I'm trying to find info on how to design the rig and sails if I go RC and all I keep getting is how to make the sails or very class specific info. Does anyone here know how to design a sail plan or know who does?

Edited October 9 by Bedford

[Keith Black]

Any help here?

 

https://modelshipworld.com/search/?&q=rc rigged sloop&page=1&quick=1&search_and_or=and&sortby=relevancy

 

[Kenchington]

8 hours ago, Bedford said:

Does anyone here know how to design a sail plan or know who does?

It will be primarily an issue of placing the centre of effort of the rig in relation to the centre of lateral resistance of the hull. Neither can be exactly determined from the paper plans and both move as the wind changes and/or the hull heels, so some "tuning" (mostly a matter of adjusting the rake of the mast) will be needed.

 

You can start by finding the geometric centre of the (lateral) plane of the underwater body. Then sketch in possible sail shapes (by length of boom and gaff, height of the hounds, number of headsails etc.), find the geometric centre of each sail then that of their combination. Then adjust until the centre of the sailplane lies roughly over the centre of lateral resistance.

 

I hope that's some help but it's about as far as I am competent to advise. You will need to know more, so look for textbooks on yacht design.

 

Trevor

[Bedford]

Thanks Keith, I'll have to have a good look through that lot

 

Trevor, you've got me further ahead then I was, thanks.

[Bedford]

Well I've ripped the whole deck off because the planks were not glued down properly everywhere and the "tar" was just cheap wood filler putty which was falling out, I tried just removing the planks from the ply substrate but where it was glued well it was really glued on and the substrate ply is way too thin and flexes under the chisel so it's gone.

 

There will now be a lot of carving, cutting and sanding to get the frame tops even and ready for new beam shelves (of which there are none) and deck frames.

 

I'm also considering rigging options, as a Bermudan rig the mast will rise 1.9mtrs above the deck meaning she'd have to live on the floor which would hide the beautiful lines of the hull. As a gaffer the mast would rise 1.5mtrs which still leaves the boat itself pretty low on display. One option rattling around is to do it like an admiralty model with only about 250mm of mast so the hull is displayed at a much better height. 

Edited October 13 by Bedford

[Jim Lad]

Of course if you rig her fully, you could then take her sailing!

 

John

[Bedford]

John, that's always been on the cards, and I have the gear to do it, but since you can't scale the wind RC yachts tend to often sail in East Coast Low conditions so they have ballast bulbs well below the keel. This model has ballast weight built into the keel (see the black portion in the above pics) but I don't know what it is. It's fibreglassed over.

Is it heavy enough?

Can it be drilled to allow attachment of extra ballast while sailing?

Would I sail it much?

How long is a piece of string?

[Jim Lad]

Should be able to attach extra ballast for sailing. maybe even have a sailing rig and a display rig?

 

John

[Bedford]

The more I dug into the deck situation the more I realised the only viable option was to remove the gunwale then the margin boards and bring the hull back to level with the top of the sheer strake. So I cut off the bulwarks at the bow which won't be reusable except for the cap rails and proceeded to remove the stbd gunwale. I was looking at ways to cut it off so I might reuse it but that wasn't viable so I planed it off. Spotted Gum is a very tough timber but it planes beautifully so it didn't take long to remove, port side next then finding a way to remove the remnants of the deck.

 

I didn't touch it today because after dodging it for 6 years I finally succumbed to covid and the energy levels just aren't there. 

 

[Jim Lad]

Sorry to hear about the Covid, mate! Hope it's a light dose.

 

John

[Bedford]

Thanks John

[Bedford]

I've spent the day removing the last remnants of the gunwales and deck. There was an awful lot of sanding to get rid of thick glue in the bow and stern, no idea what the glue is but it's tough to get rid of.

 

Meanwhile I have no idea what sort of conditions the original builder thought this model might be subject to but it's built like an ice breaker. Huge oregon frames 15mm thick with a massive bow frame and the compression post is 1/4 the size of the one I put in my recent full size 17 foot build!

 

If she's to become an RC sailer I'll have to find a way to get rid of a lot of it.

[Jim Lad]

She's certainly solidly built!

 

John

[Bedford]

The overabundance of woodwork has been removed more easily than I had anticipated thanks largely to a new bit I found for the Dremel and the fact that a lot of it was just stuck in with silastic so a short crack with a small hammer broke them loose.

 

The Dremel bit

I took two sections of keel frame out to allow the installation of auxiliary drive so now I can fit up to a 540 can motor comfortably.

Interestingly this next pic shows an epoxy filled mast step in the keel just forward of the bottom frame which raises more questions about what this model has been through given it appears to have never been finished.

[Jim Lad]

You're certainly making good progress!

 

John

[Bedford]

Yes, being stuck at home with Covid has some small advantages