Muscongus Bay Lobster Smack by Kenchington - Model Shipways - 1:24

[Kenchington]

I do not intend to log my build of the Muscongus Bay boat in the same detail as I did with the Norwegian pram. For one thing, there are MSW members who know the full-size boats, or at least the Friendship sloops which evolved from the centreboard boats, whereas I have never even seen an example of either type. So I won't have much to offer that would be unique. Still, I figured I should open a new log, so that I can post whatever comes up. Right now, I'm just scanning previous build logs and preparing notes to supplement the kit instructions!

 

Trevor

[RVB]

Fun and enjoyable build without a lot of headaches. Enjoy and will follow your build. 
Best Rick. (RVB)

[GGibson]

4 hours ago, Kenchington said:

So I won't have much to offer that would be unique.

 

Hope your Lobster Smack build goes well, Trevor!  And I think posting your build progress would be valuable to others.  As I recall, there were just enough nuances that individuals encountered in their builds, whether it was due to manufacturer quirks in their laser cutting or how each of us did something slightly different that made our boats unique, that having several resources to look back on were ever so helpful.

 

And with your fine work on the Norwegian Sailing Pram as evidence, your Lobster Smack build will also shine.  Looking forward to whatever updates you provide on this build.  It was a frustrating build for me as an inexperienced builder, but it was enjoyable!  Have fun with it! 

[Kenchington]

Scanning of other people's build-logs completed and I now have a satisfying amount of annotations scribbled into my instruction booklet. It is very helpful to see the various problems previous builders of this kit have run into and the solutions developed!

 

Thinking as I read, I've come to a few decisions for my build that will shape the way I proceed. No need to go through everything now but I will start with one issue:

 

Aside from the learning experience, somebody might want to build the kit simply to produce a beautiful art object to decorate their home. Fair enough for those who choose that path. Even give the sloop a gilded figurehead and a crew of kittens decked out in faux-pirate costume, if you wish! But that's not me.

 

More often, those who have logged their builds seem to have aimed for how a centreboard sloop might look if fitted out as a yacht -- as many Friendship sloops have been. Lots of emphasis on attractive colour combinations in the paintwork, mahogany-like fittings, shiny brass and neatly faked-down lines. Of course, no original Muscongus Bay centreboarder survived to become a yacht, while the only full-sized replicas yet built weren't fitted out that way. And I can't see why anyone would want to devote the middle quarter of a recreational boat to be a pair of huge live-wells. Still, if a yacht-like finish meets someone's the need for a decorative artwork, go for it! But, again, that's not me.

 

I am a fisheries scientist by training, with an interest in the history of fisheries. So, faced with this kit as part of the Shipwright-series learning experience, I want to build it as a 19th-Century Maine lobsterboat that looks like a lobsterboat. And that doesn't mean just adding a couple of traps on the deck of the finished sloop. In fact, my choice will affect the very first piece of basswood cut out and will go on affecting my build until I do indeed add the lobster traps.

 

In the kit instructions, Step 1 is the first part of assembling the spine of the hull but Step 2 is adding the centreboard and that can't be added until it has been painted -- at least a strip across it that would be visible in the model but hard to reach after the spine is completed. So the very first thing is to get the centreboard out, shape it a little and then paint. 

 

But (unlike the dory and pram), the sloop's prototype had to spend much of her year afloat and that meant an underwater body coated in antifouling paint. Given the time and place, that probably meant products of the Tarr & Wonson Copper Paint Factory, in Gloucester -- the company having been established in 1863 as America's first manufacturer of copper-based antifouling. So the model's underwater body, including the centreboard, needs to be finished with that distinctive shade, slightly on the scarlet side of brick-red, that was typical of ships' hulls for a century.

 

Maine lobstermen certainly cared about the visual appearance of their boats but they did not need to worry much about colour contrasts between the topsides and antifouling that was largely hidden by water. Models, however, are displayed with their underwater bodies very visible and hence the visual appearance does depend on bottom and topside compatibility. Hence, my choice to portray a working lobsterboat not only dictates the colour below the waterline but also limits options for the entire colour scheme.

 

Trevor

Edited Tuesday at 10:36 PM by Kenchington

[JacquesCousteau]

Looking forward to following along with this build! I'm very curious to see what you do to make it a working boat rather than a yacht.

[Kenchington]

We shall see what develops. One thing I won't be doing is giving the model the hard-used look of an active fishing boat. I know that's contradictory but I don't have the skills in "weathering" and, besides, I like the products of my hands to look good. So I will be modelling a new sloop, as her proud owner might take her on her first lobstering trip, after accepting her from the boatbuilder. That way, I can have everything pristine and yet faithful to my subject.

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

On @Venti's build log:

 @Dee_Dee has made the point that the Shipwright-series Muscongus Bay boat diverges from the lines published by Howard Chapelle, which the (much cruder) Midwest kit does follow. Whether David Antscherl intended it or the Model Shipways production team changed things, the Shipwright kit builds into a hull with a deeper keel, hence tending towards the later Friendship sloops. I don't have a way to check but I'll not dispute the conclusion. However, in case anyone cares to ask how I can build a model of a centreboard lobsterboat if the kit does not follow the only lines plan we have of a centreboard lobsterboat, I will explain my reasoning:

 

On his build log,

@JacquesCousteau has explored the history of these boats in some detail:

 

He quotes a source as suggesting that the impetus for developing the centreboard boats came from the extensions of railways, allowing the supply of fresh fish to Boston from outlying parts of Maine. That may have been part of it but there were also major changes in the lobster industry.

 

Well smacks had been sailing down from Boston and collecting live lobster for the city's market from the 1840s, gradually extending their reach eastwards. Canning of lobsters had been tried from 1842 and took off after 1852. All of that increased demand put more money in fishermen's pockets, which could be invested in larger boats. More especially, a winter fishery for lobster began around 1845 and, at that season, the bugs withdraw from the coast, so the fishermen had to go out into the open Gulf of Maine. Clearly, they needed something more capable than the open dories and (lapstrake) peapods used in summer fishing within the bays and around the islands.

 

What they needed was deep-keel Friendship sloops but it took time to develop such a radical change.  First, open boats could be given small foredecks, afterdecks and sidedecks, with a coaming around the cockpit to reduce the amount of water coming aboard. Then the foredeck could be extended until a man could crawl under it for a bit of shelter, later developed into a closed-in cuddy, which later still could have a coach-roof to provide sitting headroom. Somewhere along the line, live wells were added, to prevent the lobsters dying during the longer trips back to shore. And, most important, the boats were given centreboards so that they could sail to windward. As sailing came to dominate over rowing, new designs could have fuller bodies and some drag to the keel, as well as some flare to the bow for riding waves. Gradually, carvel construction replaced lapstrake.

 

The final step was to go for a deep keel and abandon the centreboard -- producing a Friendship sloop.

 

When Howard Chapelle came to study these boats, little evidence of the earlier types remained and the one example he could really study was, inevitably, one of the later ones, closer to the final Friendship design. But that was only one example amongst a great diversity of designs. As @JacquesCousteau has said, there was no one kind of Muscongus Bay sloop, rather it was "something of a moving target" -- a series of boats built during a phase of development which, following Chapelle, we choose to classify by their being more sailing boats than rowing ones, while having centreboards rather than a fixed deep keel.

 

If the Shipwright-series rendition is a half-step further along that progress than the boat that Chapelle examined, I'm happy with that. I am planning to build a generic lobsterboat of the 1890s, rather than any particular vessel.

 

Trevor

Edited Wednesday at 02:44 AM by Kenchington

[Kenchington]

I have already written that I won't be "weathering" my sloop, mostly because I don't have the necessary skills.  I did wonder about building her with some opening of interior areas but I have decided against that too.

 

An open cuddy hatch could add a lot of interest by revealing hidden detail and I do understand the attractions of constructing "doll house" miniatures or reproducing the intricate complexities of a fighter-aircraft's cockpit. The trouble is that fishing-boat cuddies don't have standard sets of controls and gauges, like a plane's cockpit. They end up a mess of spare clothes, rumpled bedding, discarded wet (oilskin) gear, spare parts, maintenance tools, food and drink, some sort of a lantern, maybe a book or two -- some of it stuffed in odd corners, some rolling around on the sole, much half-forgotten by its owner until needed. Figuring out quite what might have been in a Muscongus Bay boat's cuddy in 1895 would be pure guesswork, so opening the hatch would provide opportunities to display modelling skill but would only add to the accuracy of the model by chance.

 

I know that some builders of the kit have chosen to leave one of the live-well hatches off instead. But what would that show? With the sloop in use for its design purpose, all you would see is a water surface, sloshing around with the sloop's movement. Hard to model and visually uninteresting.

 

There is a reverse problem in the cockpit, in that it is already open and hence needs to be fitted out. But that leads to an immediate problem: The kit has a plank-on-bulkhead construction, not plank-on-frame. Where the bulkheads are cut back in way of the cockpit, we are left with a few bulky "frames" showing under the sidedecks, not the many more but much thinner & narrower frames of the full-size boat -- and they do show, as the photos in multiple build logs confirm. That's a bit unsatisfactory but I don't fancy trying to convert the cockpit area into plank-on-frame, especially when the stability of the part-built hull relies on having the deck installed before planking begins. I may extend the coamings downwards until they hide the hull structure entirely, but I haven't yet decided.

 

That would give the option of presenting the cockpit seats as locker tops. In turn, that presents the possibility of having one locker open -- perhaps revealing a coil of anchor warp. Maybe I will go that far. 

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Step 0: Centreboard -- or, to use the authentic terminology of the men who built and used the prototype: "Centerboard".

 

Yesterday, it was time to escape all the words and start sanding basswood! In truth, the board needed no more than removal of char and gentle rounding off of corners. Then a spray of primer and two coats of paint. I used the kit-suppled ModelExpo "Hull Copper Red". Not the best quality, as others have found before me, and the final colour isn't quite as bright as I would like, though also not as bad as in this image:

I will try for something better when I get to painting the hull but the hard-to-reach parts of the board will be fine without another coat on top.

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Step 1: Spine

 

I wasn't expecting to have useful suggestions for this build but, here goes ...

 

As anyone who has built this kit is very much aware, the hull is built on a "spine" (what other kits too-often bizarrely call a "false keel") and it is a spine built up of three layers, to leave the centreboard trunk open between the outer two. Those outer layers are very thin, with many fragile tabs. Gluing the layers together means a whole lot of white glue but the water in that warps the thin layers, causing trouble from the start of the build. The kit instructions suggest using weight, rather than clamps, to hold the parts while the glue sets. But that brings another problem, at least for me: Before it sets, white glue lubricates. Putting a weight on top makes one layer slide over the other, while the weight hides the error from sight. Bad news when you lift the weight off and find non-aligned parts firmly held together!

 

The kit does come with spacers to help with alignment but they are thicker than the spine itself and so limit where weight can be placed. And I found that they made it hard to see whether the parts were truly aligned.

 

So I drilled two 1/16 holes in out-of-the-way parts of the (rather thicker) central part of the spine, carefully lined up one side piece and drilled that too. Then chopped off short lengths from left-over brass tube from the pram kit and inserted those in the holes of the central part -- though that took a bit of enlarging of the holes:

 

Add glue, push side piece over brass studs, add weight and:

Came out very closely aligned and very straight, so OK thus far. There's a second central piece of the spine to go abaft the centre plate trunk (and a third, little one abaft the sternpost). Have to see whether those work OK too.

 

And the fragile tabs? Only broken one so far. (I was focused on the end where I was working and ignored the rest: Bad mistake.) Fortunately, the broken bit will have one side glued to a central piece and the other spanned by a stiffening/reinforcing piece, so repair will be trivially easy.

 

 

Feels good to be back to building boats!

 

 

Trevor

 

 

[Kenchington]

Step 1 continued:

 

Previous builds of this kit have run into another problem: There is a curved slot in each of the side pieces of the spine, in which the control rod for the centreboard is supposed to move. However, if the spine is assembled from the production-kit's parts but following David Antscherl's instructions, the rod does not line up with its slots. To solve that, past builders have cut away the after edge of the slot, at the cost of making already-fragile parts even weaker.

 

I dry-assembled the pieces, looked at the geometry and found a different solution: Simply move the centreboard pivot 3mm forwards from the laser-cut hole for its axle. That means drilling new 1/16 holes in each spine side-piece and trimming a bit off the forward central piece of the spine (trimming only from what will become the interior of the centreboard trunk, so exact cuts are not necessary). All that has to be done before assembling the spine but, once done, everything lines up nicely. The next problem, of course, is that a pair of close-set 1/16 holes in very thin basswood will break into one another. One of mine already has. I will fill the gap with epoxy and re-drill, which should fix the problem.

 

Another alternative that did not occur to me until too late, but someone might try, would be even easier, if the geometry works. (I haven't checked and now cannot.) That is: It might be possible to just drill an alternative hole in the centreboard for the control rod. Worth looking into anyway.

 

Trevor

Edited Friday at 02:45 PM by Kenchington

[Kenchington]

One of the oddities of this kit, compared to my own experience at least, is that it needs detail finish work in the cockpit area amidst construction of the basic framework. So, while slowly assembling the spine (despite four breakages so far 🥲), I have been doing some research.

 

The oldest published description of the boat-type comes from Richard Rathbun, who prepared the chapter on lobster and crab fisheries for George Brown Goode's 1880s opus on the US fisheries. Rathbun's words about what he called a "Muscongus Bay lobster boat" are freely available on-line (https://archive.org/details/fisheriesfishery52goodrich/fisheriesfishery52goodrich/page/670/). Extracting the key points, they were:

o   Square-sterned sloops

o   16 to 26 feet in length, 6 to 9 in beam

o   Some larger ones “nearly or quite” 5 tons

o   All have centreboards

o   Some lapstrake, others “set work” -- by which he presumably meant carvel

o   Open aft, with a cuddy forward

o   A seat around the after part of the standing room

o   Ballast floored over

o   Two bunks and a stove in the cuddy

o   When lobstering, they are managed by one man

o   In winter, the lobsters are kept from freezing by the stove in the cuddy

o   18fter costs $80, 25fter $200

 

Most of that is fully in accord with the kit's expectations but it does bring out two points, one for now and the other later.

 

If there was a stove in the cuddy and it was lit while winter fishing to keep the lobsters alive, then there must have been some sort of chimney in the coachroof. At least, I don't see a lobsterman keeping the hatch open in all weathers just to let smoke out, even if the stove fire would draw that way.

 

Of more immediate concern, note that although the hull was open aft, it had floorboards above the ballast -- which would have been beach stones, perhaps with some angular fieldstone in between to keep everything locked in place. More on the floorboards in a minute.

 

Goode's volumes included an accompanying plate (copyright of the US government, which grants free non-commercial use):

Again, that has much in common with the kit, plus some interesting details. (Note, for one, that the forestay and bobstay are continuous, passing around a sheave (probably a dumb sheave) in the bowsprit end and tensioned at the stem.)

 

 

The next publication was John Nathan Cobb's report on the lobster fisheries of Maine, published in 1900 (also available on-line through Google books). He had little to say about the boats used, though he did divided them into three classes.  The smallest were "rowboats" (a mix of dories and peapods), while the largest were sloops and schooners of over 5 tons net (which seems to have been some sort of regulatory break-point) -- though only just over: they averaged 8 tons. (Cobb was specific that that was "new measurement", so modern net tonnage, not builders' measure.)  They were worked by two men (sometimes 3 or 4) when lobstering. There had only been 8 such vessels lobstering in 1880 but 130 in 1898, so a larger, richer fishery but probably having to work further from land in winter weather.

 

The middle class is the one of present interest and, unfortunately, Cobb only paraphrased Rathbun's description which (if we are to believe Chapelle) was a dozen years out of date by the turn of the century. Cobb did add two minor points: He stated that these under-5 ton boats averaged about 2 tons. Second, he wrote that these boats were especially adapted to the winter fishery.

 

 

Our third published source is Howard Chapelle's work reported in his American Small Sailing Craft. He will certainly have had access to Rathbun's text and, by his own account, also had on hand a model prepared for the Fish Commission (i.e. very likely at the same time as Goode's plate was prepared), some builder's half-models, a sailplan from Admiral Pâris' work supplemented by some original sailmakers' drawings, and one surviving hulk (useful for details of construction and fittings), plus various photos and descriptions. Chapelle's reconstructed draft used the lines from a builder's model of circa 1888 and Pâris' sailplan. To that drawing, he added in his text that the Muscongus Bay sloops (as he called them) were:

 

o   Centreboarders -- which type remained popular into the 1890s, though Friendship-type keel sloops had appeared by the late 1880s and went on to replace the centreboarders during the '90s (thus contradicting Cobb).

o   Often lapstrake

o   Construction as in the later Friendship sloops

o   Some had the same deck arrangement as those keel sloops, others just had a large cockpit, perhaps with a cuddy (which might or might not have a full bulkhead closing off the space)

o   Cockpits were deep and not self-bailing

o   Most had live wells

o   Sailplan of jib & mainsail only

o   No shrouds

o   Gaff hoisted with a single halliard (not separate throat and peak halliards)

 

Note that he said that many of the centreboard sloops were lapstrake but did not claim that few were carvel. Although the type was variable, some were decked, with enclosed cuddy and live wells -- thus consistent with the kit.

 

The claim that there were no shrouds was in direct conflict with Goode's plate, though who was right and who wrong may be impossible to determine this long after.

 

The point of immediate note here is the deep cockpit. That might suggest a coaming reaching above waist height but, I am confident, that would be the wrong interpretation: Note the figure in Goode's plate, standing with the coaming at about mid-thigh -- which height would be pretty much essential to the ergonomics of lifting heavy lobster traps over the rail. It is also consistent with Chapelle's reconstruction of a Friendship sloop, which has its cockpit sole less than 2ft 6in below the rim of the coaming.

 

So why did Chapelle say "deep"? Why, come to that, did he say that the cockpits were not self-draining, when no workboat of the 19th Century had a self-draining one? I think the answer is that he was writing for people familiar with 20th-Century conversions of Friendship sloops into yachts. Some of those were doubtless fitted with self-draining cockpits (for safety but also to keep water out of the bilges), though it meant placing the cockpit sole high above the waterline (so that the cockpit did not flood when the sloop heeled), which would have meant raising the seats to coaming level, of they were to be comfortable. By comparison, the work-boat configuration would have seemed deep.

 

The other point in this is that a cockpit that doesn't drain back into the sea must instead drain downwards to the bilges quickly, because water sloshing around high up is really bad for stability. So those who have complained that the cockpit soles in kits do not extend to meet the planking were wrong: There should be open space between the edge of the sole and the planking. Likewise, those who have portrayed the cockpit sole as caulked and waterproof planking, tight up to the bulkheads, have erred: It should be floorboards with space enough between for water to drain down.

 

I go back to Rathbun's comment that the ballast was floored over. I take that to mean that, once the ballast rocks had been arranged to give the boat the desired trim, a half-dozen beams were laid athwartships (Chapelle shows five in his Friendship sloop), with their ends resting on the planking but nailed to the frames, and pine boards laid fore-and-aft on top, presumably nailed down. All would be lightly enough built that it could be stripped out whenever the ballast had to be shifted -- as when making a repair or just to clean up the stinky gurry that collected amongst the stones.

 

And that arrangement of boards is what I will try to represent in my sloop's cockpit.

 

Trevor

 

 

 

[Kenchington]

Steps 1 & 3: Construction of spine completed -- sort of

 

All three layers of the spine glued together (mostly) neatly, despite a total of five breaks. The problem isn't just that the two side pieces are very thin, with multiple narrow tabs. It is also that those tabs are crossed by laser-burnt marker lines and the laser very nearly cut right through. The slightest touch can complete the task and separate the end of a tab.

 

The reason that I have only "sort of" completed the steps is that two of the breaks were both just abaft the sternpost, where there is a gap between the (thicker) middle parts of the spine -- a gap that will, in time, take the rudder shaft. So my aftermost spine part is entirely separate from the rest. I will wait until the bulkheads are in place on both sections, so that I have something to grab onto, and then make a repair.

 

I have deviated from the instructions by not yet fastening the centreboard on its pivot. I did use it as a spacer while the glue dried under the weights but I have avoided accidentally gluing the moving part into place, while delaying the metalwork until daylight. Also let me clean up the char along each side of the centreboard slot, without the board in the way. Subsequent attachment of the board and its control rod should be straightforward.

 

Good news is that the three layers of the spine went together with good alignment (no more than about 0.1 mm out anywhere) and no warping at all.

 

For anyone wanting similar success when pressing kit parts together ...

 

Just get a couple of friendly hippos to stand on them 😀

 

Trevor 

[druxey]

Hippo, hippo, hurray! Laser-cut guides burned too deep, not so good.

[Kenchington]

Step 2: Centreboard: Completed

 

I had a fight to get a tiny piece of 1/16 brass rod into place as the pivot for the board, gooped some epoxy over the ends to hold it in place, laid the spine down and the ***!!!!## piece fell out under gravity alone! So I shoved the whole length of kit-supplied 1/16 through, added epoxy to one end, then clipped off most of the rod with shears. That worked.

 

Control rod shaped up nicely and easily. I painted as much as might be visible in black, rather than have shiny brass on a fishing boat. Looked nice for a while until the paint started chipping off. I dare say it will be fine after a touch-up. Still have the wooden handle to add but the instructions say "later" -- presumably meaning after the deck is in place.

 

 

Step 4: Reinforcing pieces: Completed but badly

 

There's no warning in the instructions that the reinforcing abreast of the centreboard trunk may obstruct the movement of the board's control rod. Mine did and I had to gouge grooves before gluing, then widen the grooves after. 

 

My bigger problem is that I can't see the laster-marked position lines once glue starts oozing out of the joint. For most of these pieces, a little bit of displacement hardly matters but I'm going to have to do some surgery to get Frame 4 to fit. Still, that shouldn't be a problem.

 

 

Feels strange to be assembling the various parts without a care in the world, knowing that everything can be sanded or shimmed as necessary, then hidden later. With the dory and the pram, precision in the initial structure was critical and yet every piece is visible in the finished model.

 

 

Trevor

[TerryPat]

I'm looking forward to watching your build. I built the Midwest version of the kit years ago. It still looks beautiful! I was able to protect it from my wife's feather duster, unlike some other of my models .. lol

[Kenchington]

As the cockpit has to be completed soon, I've been thinking about essential gear.

 

There's a bunch of modern safety equipment, like flares and lifejackets, that no commercial fishermen would have even considered in the 19th century (nor for much of the 20th either). Then there are things that our little sloop would very likely have had on board but stowed away safely in the cuddy, like a box compass, lead and line, fog horn (lung powered) and a hurricane lantern. Beyond the hull itself and the rig (and leaving aside the lobster traps, buoys and buoy ropes for now), I can only think of four things that ought to be aboard and visible:

 

1: A pair of oars, for when the wind falls light. (The kit has the rowlocks but not the oars to go with them.)

 

2: A boathook, for picking up the mooring at the end of the day-- or, more likely, a gaff for catching the lobster buoys which could double as a boathook.

 

3: An anchor, with some chain, for when there is no other way to keep from being blown onto a lee shore. 

 

4: A bilge pump, for clearing all the water that gets into the cockpit and thence down to the ballast.

 

Oars will need to be lashed down on deck, as there is no other space long enough for them. Gaff would go there too, unless shown in use.

 

I think that the anchor needs to go in a corner of the cockpit. Setting or weighing it would mean going forward to the bow but the deck there is narrow and dangerous, so I'd guess that a lobsterman would range a sufficient length of warp in the cockpit, carry a bight of it forward (outboard of all obstacles), belay that to the sampson post, pass the anchor's side of the warp through the bow fairlead, then retreat to the cockpit before actually dropping the anchor.

 

The bilge pump is a big unknown. Chapelle's draught of a Friendship sloop shows something that looks like an old-style pump, rising from beside the keelson, with what might be a pump dale at the level of the coaming. I'm thinking of trying to replicate the visible, upper part of that.

 

Any thoughts and comments would be welcome!

 

Trevor