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 November 4 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 November 5 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 November 7 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

[Kenchington]

After a week with only stolen moments for model building, I have had most of a rainy Sunday with the sloop-to-be.

 

The odd moments had been enough to strike centrelines across each bulkhead, free it from its sheet, flip it over and reinsert into the sheet to check symmetry. No problems there at all.

 

Fitting bulkheads to spine has been more challenging. Before removing charr, they were all much too tight to go into place. Once the charr was off, most were a little too mobile. Meanwhile, the irregularities in my fitting of reinforcing pieces to the spine meant that each bulkhead needed individual fitting. No big problems, though.

 

The instructions recommend fitting bulkhead 4 first. That, however, is in two halves to make space for the centreboard, so I decided to begin gluing with #3 to get something more solid to establish perpendiculars and have a reference to take check measurements from for the other bulkheads. There are three dimensions, of course. The vertical fit is mostly easy, as all but two bulkheads should be flush with the top of the spine. The exceptions are #3 and #4, which rise up to support the cuddy's coachroof. #4 has steps where the halves close over the spine but #3 needed aligning. I dry-fit #1 and #2, then checked the heights of the outer ends of the three bulkheads, where they will support the deck edge, and adjusted #3 until the alignment was within the range to perfect by sanding.

 

To get the other two dimensions perpendicular, I marked a horizontal line across the bulkhead and clamped on trusty Lego blocks, aligned so as to keep everything tight and square. Then lifted the combination off, applied glue, replaced it  and it just needed finger pressure until the glue began to bite:

 

The other bulkheads needed varied fiddling, with the Lego arranged as and when needed -- #1 going into place with fingers only. That's got me to:

 

While waiting on glue to harden up, I started preparations for the cockpit and its detailing. Bulkhead 6 forms the forward edge and (unlike anything yet in the model, aside from  the centreboard) it will be visible when all is finished. Hence, I am trying to paint it before attaching to the spine. Chosen colour is yellow ochre, that being an available and affordable option for a lobster fisherman circa 1890. Unfortunately, even when primed, a first coat well sanded and the second with the paint thinned, artist's acrylic still shows the brush strokes:

Further trials needed!

 

The kit's cockpit "floor" would be OK if painted in an opaque finish, but that would not be realistic. In a clear finish, past build logs show that it looks as though made of marine ply -- again, not realistic. Tracing plank "edges" across the surface doesn't fix the problems as the grain of the underlying basswood runs athwartships. My solution began by scribing "gaps" between "boards" (1/4 inch wide, or 6" full-size: Narrower would have been better but more work.) Ideally, I would have cut right through and set the "boards" apart from one another but I didn't fancy getting caught on the extra complications. To hide the reality that the grain of the wood runs the other way, I doodled in some new "grain", using two colours of acrylic (intended for leather, hence suited to absorbent material) and thin lines of India ink, then topped everything off with two coats of ModelExpo clear finish. The result is ugly to look at and I should have been less enthusiastic with the "grain". However, once the cockpit is finished, this version may pass for bare spruce boards with the resin still oozing out:

At least nobody will mistake it for a sheet of marine ply!

 

 

I have also started building an elm-tree pump to go in the cockpit beside the forward bulkhead.  It is a short piece of 1/16 dowel, with heavy printer paper soaked in white glue and wrapped around, then given a coat of yellow ochre to match the rest of the cockpit furniture:

The paper extends beyond the dowel and the hollow interior will become black. It will still need a handle and a spout, while I will need a pail for the water to pour into. (I decided against a much taller pump that would have discharged over the cockpit coaming.)

 

And that's it for today!

 

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

I've been back to just stolen moments for working on the smack, but that delay has given me a chance to figure out how to make artists' acrylic work for me. So I have finally got an acceptable yellow-ochre finish on bulkhead #6 and added that to the developing hull. For good measure, I worked on until I had the bilge pump installed too. So now I have:

Aside from things fully sealed and solid, like paddleboards, and maybe some with a self-draining cockpit (think Laser dinghy), every watercraft needs a way to get water out of the bilges. Doubly so for planked wooden boats and ships (which always leak a bit) and triply if they are open above and so take in rain and spray too. Aboard dory or pram, you could reach to the bottom planks and use a bailer or even a sponge, but the shape of the Muscongus Bay sloop requires some kind of pump. As she is operated single-handed when lobstering, the pump really should be accessible from the cockpit, so that the lone sailor can reach it without leaving the helm for more than a moment. Since she has beach-stone ballast, there must be some kind of pump well, to separate pump from rocks. That much is certain but is out of sight and can be ignored when model building.

 

The pump has to reach deep into the hull, lest there be a lot of water deeper still that cannot be reached and removed, so the pump needs to be at the forward end of the cockpit, not further aft. It could be set forward of bulkhead 6 but that would mean a more-complex pump well, merged into the deck planking at its top. I've opted for the simplicity of putting the pump in the cockpit itself.

 

The big question is what sort of pump would be fitted into the well. By 1890, there may have been patent diaphragm pumps suited to a lobster sloop and certainly there were lift pumps with iron workings and pump-brake handles. But the cheapest, simplest, most familiar and perhaps most reliable option was an elm-tree pump, so that is what I have gone for. Such a pump lifts water but does not generate pressure. The discharge can only flow out under gravity. At first, I thought of making the pump tall enough that it could have a dale above the level of the cockpit coaming. That, however, would have to rise very high, so I have opted for a more-modest pump, discharging into a bucket that would then need to be emptied overside. I have assumed a pump well beneath the cockpit floorboards, then provided an "iron" loop bolted to the bulkhead, through which the pump could be lowered into its well -- or lifted out for maintenance, when needed for pumping out the live-wells etc.

 

In model terms, the loop is annealed and bent brass, painted black. With a household nail as a centre punch and one of the bits supplied with the kit, I drilled for four nails. Those I drove with an Amati nailer -- which proved very easy after the first couple of attempts. I'm happy with it, except that shorter legs on either side would have been better. The pump body is printer paper soaked in white glue and wrapped around a dowel core. The spout is a fragment of a cocktail stick, glued into  drilled hole. I shaped up a chock to hold the lower end in place, out of sight under the floorboards.

 

When I add the assorted gear in the cockpit, I will complete the pump with its handle. And put a bucket under the spout.

 

Bulkheads #7 and #8 should go in easily now. However, there will still be much to do in the cockpit before the deck can go on. And I have to finish the structure abaft the rudder shaft, then attach that to the rest. 

 

Trevor

[JacquesCousteau]

Very nice work, the bilge pump is a great detail to include! (And one that I might steal for my own build, with due credit in the build log of course). I had been wondering about the pump myself but didn't see anything about it in any of my sources, but using the Friendship Sloop plans instead to find it is a great idea.

 

I notice that the Friendship Sloop seems to have the pump a bit further back in the cockpit. Looking around in photos, though, I noticed a detail I had previously missed. In the photo below of the centerboard sloop Charity, which was built in the 1970s reconstructed from Chapelle's plans, there seems to be something protruding from the floor planking--a hole with something sticking out of it?--just off the bulkhead to the port side of the centerboard case (which, unlike on the model, projects a bit into the cockpit). I would guess that that's the space for the pump, although I don't know if they went for a more modern type in the reconstruction. In any case, it's right where you added your pump.

Source: Penobscot Marine Museum digitized photo collection.

 

[Kenchington]

Thank you for that, JC! Nice to see that practical experience supports my deduction. (Though the fate of the 1970s reproductions isn't exactly encouraging.)

 

I'm not surprised that Chapelle put the pump further aft in his Friendship. With more drag to the keel and lines more suited to sail (and less those of a rowing boat), the Friendship has the deepest point in her bilges nearer to the sternpost than the centreboard boats did. The best place for the pump is not literally the deepest point in the hull but the deepest that gives enough width between keelson and outer planking to fit the bottom end of the pump into. Also, for a simple elm-tree pump, the lower end has to be almost vertically under the upper, while the upper has to be where a man can work it, without it being in the way when doing things other than pumping.

 

I'm not pretending that my version is historically accurate, just one plausible solution to a definite need for some kind if bilge-pump arrangement.

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Steps 1 to 6 completed: All bulkheads, transom and cockpit floorboards fastened to central spine

 

I did take a photo to prove it but my computer won't admit that that image is on my phone and I'm not about to take another.

 

The bulkheads all went on with little trouble and some with no problems at all, just a lot of careful checking for squareness, along with judicious use of Lego blocks. The only real difficulty was squaring up #9, which goes right by the break in the spine. (And I won't try fixing that break until I have finished the fiddly work in the cockpit.)

 

The floorboards would have been easy if not for having to make a cut-out to fit around the pump. By sheer luck, that only involved one of the scribed "boards", though I initially cut two and had to make a repair. The one cut had to be much longer than I wanted before I could work the boards in around the bulkheads. Still, I'm sure all will look OK when everything is finished (with a jib sheet loose on the boards in that area and distracting the eye from the hole, quite likely).

 

Next up is cockpit seats and trim, then attach the part abaft the rudder stock -- and then the great adventure of adding the deck!

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Today, I decided to skip forward a bit and prepare the sloop's deck.

 

Plank decks leak. There's really no way around that. Back when yachts were made of real wood, not popped out of moulds, amateur sailors didn't much like drips of water on their bunks and often covered their decks in canvas. I never got to do that job and I don't recall the details. I think waterproof canvas was stretched over the deck and bedded down into a mastic of some kind. Certainly, the canvas was then painted -- painted in whatever colour the owner wished. Thus, anyone building a Muscongus Bay boat to yacht standards can paint their model's deck any which way they choose.

 

I will give the cuddy coachroof that treatment but I doubt that a working boat's deck would have been done like that. Maybe I am wrong but I doubt that the painted canvas would stand up to the wear and tear of commercial fishing. And, once water got under it, there would be potential for serious, hidden rot. So I am going for bare wood or, more exactly, the look of scrubbed white pine that clipper captains achieved by having their crews holystone the decks.

 

The kit's deck, however, is composed of two sheets of basswood (meeting down the centreline) and, if simply given a clear finish, would look like marine ply (though, in contrast to the cockpit floorboards, at least the visible grain would run fore-and-aft). So I'm trying for a "planked" look by scribing the "joints" between planks and blackening them with a soft pencil -- definitely a job to be done while the deck pieces are flat, not after they are on the model. But that choice, naturally, raises the question of how wide the planks should be and how they should lie. I photocopied the sheet of basswood containing the two deck pieces and played around with a pencil for a while.

 

Howard Chapelle did not record the details of the deck of his centreboard sloop but he did give essential information on later Friendships. Importantly, their decks had narrow planks only two inches wide. I did not welcome the thought of trying to joggle many narrow planks into margin planks that followed the continuous curve of the sloop's rail. So, I have divided the deck into four zones:

 

From the cockpit to the  cuddy bulkhead, I have scribed simple, straight, 2-inch planks, aside from at the centreline, where I went for 4-inch each side, to accommodate the centreboard control-rod's slot. That's 30 planks in all.

 

From cockpit to transom, I have imagined 24 tapered planks, 2-inch at the cockpit and 1-inch at the transom.

 

Outboard of cockpit coaming and cuddy, I went for a single strake of very wide margin plank, made up of three (relatively straight) planks on each side. However, I'm not very happy with that and I think I will scribe an extra seam, making it two strakes per side. (Maybe I will paint the outer one.) But that had better wait until I pop the pieces out of the sheet and have the edge of the cut-out as a guide for the scriber.

 

Rather than have a few short planks forward of the cuddy, I have gone for one near-triangular piece on each side of the centreline. With an unstayed mast (as Chapelle described the centreboard sloops), beefy mast partners would be needed, so I think I can justify the simplification.

 

The net result, so far, looks like:

 

It's not as neat a job as I could wish but, I hope, will give the right general impression. I'll just have wait and see how it looks once all is done, with the surface sanded and finished!

 

Trevor

 

 

 

[Kenchington]

Finally got some serious time for model building again. (Editing a manuscript to suit the peculiar format of a particular academic journal can be a ***!%$$*** pain!) Not that I have been entirely idle, but my attempts at completing the sloop's cockpit went off the rails, so I had to back up, fail again, then realize that there was an easier way.

 

The underlying trouble is something I mentioned in Post #8 of this thread: Plank-on-Bulkhead is a very practical approach when modelling a fully-planked hull, without the complications of the structurally realistic Plank-on-Frame alternative. However, P-on-B doesn't work with models of open boats, which necessarily display the internal structure to a viewer. Substituting a few bulky bulkheads for more-numerous but slimmer timbers can only leave an ugly misrepresentation. (Hence (presumably) the choice of dory and pram for the first two steps in the Shipwright series: Each has a simple internal structure that could be represented accurately without being overly demanding for those of us starting out.)

 

But what of the Muscongus Bay boat? She is mostly planked over but the cockpit is open (in the sense that an open boat is open). The kit is designed for P-on-B construction anyway and yet the bulkheads show as big, chunky, unrealistic features -- as the photos in the instructions, and multiple build-logs, confirm. The proper answer, of course, would be to substitute Plank-on-Frame construction between Bulkhead 6 and the sternpost and between the deck and the cockpit floorboards. If the kit was designed to have the bottom and topsides planked before the deck is added, I might have gone that route, but the model actually needs the deck for strength before fairing and planking begins -- while the deck would seriously impede access to the area to be framed. Working around all that sounded far too demanding, so I scratched that idea.

 

An alternative was suggested by another simplification in the kit: The very limited evidence we have of the Muscongus Bay centreboarders suggests that the cockpit seats were light and simple -- probably supported outboard by stringers on the top timbers, with a pillar to support the inboard, forward corner. Yet the kit has a solid block each side as a seat support. And that looks a whole lot like the front of a cockpit locker, with the space under the seat closed off. So why not extend the visual simplification and close off the whole space where the bulkheads are visible in models built straight out of the box? I doubt that any lobsterman of 1890 had the interior of his cockpit closed off like that but I am quite certain that he could have done, if he had so wished. So I'm fiddling with reality and going for that appearance.

 

Besides, I aim to show a working lobsterboat at work, which means that she has to be carrying all of the gear that would be needed within reach: Coils of spare hawser for whatever may arise, likely most often anchoring in deeper water; more coils of lighter rope for repairs to rigging, along with some blocks and shackles; likely a set of spare pump valves; some replacement lobster buoys and buoylines, for ones in danger of parting off; a grapple to drag for traps whose buoys have been lost ... and all the other bits and pieces that boats accumulate, save items small enough to be stowed in the cuddy. If the kit's cockpit seats were shown like those in the few surviving photographs, I would have to model all that. But, by choosing to assume closed-in lockers, I can portray the sloop with all of her gear aboard and yet not create more than a small fraction of it!

 

So that is what I am doing.

My first problem was with the kit-supplied seat supports. Their after ends have to be bevelled to fay against Bulkhead #8, which is easy enough. But pressing them in tight while the glue grips makes the angled end slide. So it was out with the isopropynol and try again. Second attempt was just good enough, so I accepted that, then sanded the forward ends flush with Bulkhead #7 -- simplifying construction but also hiding a future mess under an overhanging seat end.

 

I got into trouble trying to lay thin basswood across the forward face of the support and bulkhead. (The material kept breaking along the grain.) So I sawed, sanded and filed the blocks seen in the photo, filling the gap between support and bulkhead. I had painted as much as possible before gluing but, once all was set, there was sanding to get surfaces flush, then careful priming, followed by three coats of yellow ochre on exposed surfaces.

 

The cockpit seats went on top without trouble.

 

Grey paint is best for seats on a work boat, as it doesn't show dirt or (more important) scratches and gouges that cut down to bare wood -- wood that swiftly goes grey!  

 

Also: Closed-in lockers require openings in the seats to provide access. I marked those by scribing the surface to indicate lift-out sections. To improve things, I tried painting the grooves black, intending to scrape off the grey when all was done. However, the paint didn't want to come off, so I am left with just the scribing.

 

The kit provides a piece to fill between the after edge of the seats and the deck. I needed two more pieces to cover the inboard faces of Bulkheads 7 and 8, from the seats up to the bottom edge of the coaming. It turned out that those would need to be twisted if they were to meet the ends of the kit-supplied crosspiece, which itself would need stiffening to support the side pieces. So it was time to soften two tiny pieces in boiling water, then clamp them in place to dry:

 

That's as far as I have taken the cockpit for today but I did make one more advance: I aim to give the sloop the rig that Chapelle described, with no shrouds, but I don't fancy the consequences of my clumsy hands striking the top of the mast, if that is only supported laterally by the thin basswood of the kit's deck. So I added "mast partners" at the level of the underside of the deck, with a hole between sized for the mast:

 

I have been making some progress on a display-stand too but more about that once it is finished.

 

Next up: Get the cockpit side pieces into place, add the broken-off after framing, then it will be time for the deck!

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Moving right along ... I painted and fitted the two pieces bent yesterday. They will need a touch of filler and paint once the cockpit coamings are in but OK to proceed now. So I fitted the broken-off after portion of the framing, with a couple of cocktail sticks pinned on a temporary battens to support everything until the deck takes over that role:

And that means that I finally ready to start making this mess look like a boat!

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Today was decking the sloop.

 

The instructions book for this kit definitely supposes that the apprentice builder has experience with the dory and/or pram. It offers not one word about preparing the model's skeleton to receive its deck, but the usual work is needed. There is char to be sanded off (including in slots in the bulkheads that will later receive cockpit coamings and cuddy sides), slight bevels to be worked in the tops of the bulkheads (to match the sheer), any necessary corrections to bulkheads set too high or too low (none in my case) and any other necessary fixes (for me: sanding Bulkhead 4 to give a smooth surface for the cuddy bulkhead to come, where a offset in the bulkhead halves left a step). I also scribed a seam that divides the waterway in two, preventing it from looking over-wide.

 

Some build logs suggested sanding away enough of the central spine that the deck sits flush with the stemhead, facilitating later addition of the bowsprit. I preferred to maintain the curve of the sheer and will add a fillet over stemmed and gammon knee later, if necessary.

 

With that lot done and a 1/4-inch drill bit inserted in the mast hole to help line everything up (as per the instructions), the first side of the deck went on easily. The instructions suggest starting amidships and working towards the ends but I preferred to start at the bow, where there was more critical alignment and work aft. The instructions also suggested wetting the surface of the deck piece to make it more flexible. I didn't need to, perhaps because of all the scoring of "seams". I just applied glue, held under finger pressure for 2 minutes, added rubber bands for reinforcement while the glue set up, then moved aft and repeated. My only problem was that the rubber bands did not want to stay securely over the ends of the bulkheads, so I had to pin them. That gave me:

Once that had had time to set, the other side went on nearly as easily. Pulling the centrelines together aft of the cockpit did lift the side-deck off the bulkheads, so I got the after alignment glued down, then went back along the side. I found that I couldn't use many rubber bands as their pressure on the sides caused the scored piece between cockpit and cuddy to pucker. In the end, I relied on finger pressure and got:

 

After all was set and the bands taken off, I have:

Starting to look like a boat!

 

There's a tiny amount of tidying up to doing forward of the cuddy and even smaller amount just forward of the centreboard slot. There's a bigger problem at the forward edge of the cockpit. Like others before me, I found that the planking there was just a bit too short. More exactly, it was too short to starboard, probably because I have the bulkhead very slightly off square. I trimmed the length on the port side before adding that to the model (reducing the risk of splitting something while cutting) and must now trim the starboard side to match. Then I will add a thwartships plank to make a deck-edge.

 

The bigger problem is apparent right aft. Perhaps because of the repaired break in the centreline structure, the transom seems to be angled too far aft. That will be easily fixed by inserting a curved "plank" across the ends of the regular planking. However, the transom is also displaced to starboard of the centreline. (The deck centreline is exact to my pencilled mark of the skeleton's centreline.) I will have to trim the starboard side of the transom and see whether I can build out the port side a bit.

 

Then the deck will need some cleaning up and a finish that will keep it clean while the rest of the work proceeds. I'm thinking of Miniwax Wipe-on-Poly (satin finish), which seems to get positive comments on other MSW threads, though I will test some on scrap basswood first. I'm also thinking that the outer half of the waterways should be the same white as the topsides, while all future gluing surfaces must remain bare wood for now, of course.

 

Any thoughts or comments would be most welcome!

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

While pondering how best to fix the transom problem, I have pushed ahead with the model's stand. That's way out of sequence but my heavy tools live in my island cottage and, at this time of year (water too cold to paddle over but not yet frozen hard enough to walk on), my access is limited to periods when low tide falls within the short December daylight. Worse, I have to lug dust producing tools out onto the patio, as my only way to disperse dust is natural ventilation by the wind, and that confines me to rare, warm afternoons. I have to take advantage of the limited opportunities as they arise.

 

My dory build forcibly taught me a lesson that I know many MSW members had learnt before me: While a beautiful stand can never save a disappointing model, an ugly one can ruin the visual impression of a successful build. I wanted to do better with my pram and so combined an idea I picked off another member's build log (transparent acrylic posts, in place of kit-supplied dowel) with my own contribution: A hardwood plinth under the kit's basswood baseboard. I liked the result and aimed for the same concept with this base for the Muscongus Bay boat.

 

However, my pram is clear-finished, so the basswood base is solid colour (white) and the plinth a rich red of oiled jatoba. My sloop will be painted, so I wanted golden grain showing in the basswood base. I have given that multiple coats of marine varnish, as I would the brightwork on my full-size boat. That seemed to call for a much darker plinth and I picked up an offcut of wenge (from Zaire) at my local supplier. That only needed very slight squaring-up with a plane, then an ogive cut in the sides on the router table, following by a bit of hand sanding.

 

I got into some trouble gluing the basswood to the wenge. I did not allow for warping of the basswood when wetted with yellow glue, so did not weigh down its corners while the glue set. Also, I should have masked the wenge to protect it from penetration by surplus glue oozing out from under the basswood. Easy enough to sand off that excess but the glue-impacted wenge does not take up tung oil to match the unaffected surface. Another time, I will mask areas that might get a glue coating. Still, the defects won't be noticed in the end.

 

With a drill press to ensure vertical holes, I extended the laser-cut holes in the basswood down into the wenge, thus providing a better grip for the uprights, while being careful that both holes were equally deep. That disturbance called for a final coat of varnish over the top of the basswood, without touching its sides or the wenge.

 

Rather than clear acrylic, I thought the sloop would look better with brass supports, so picked up a length of rod from the hardware store. I cut the required flats (to take the kit-supplied basswood cradles) with my bench grinder -hardly needing more than a touch on the wheel– then tidied them up by hand filing. Having the full length of brass rod, I could go for longer supports than the instructions call for (so giving better display of the sloop's underbody), while preserving the 10mm difference in length that sets the correct drag to the sloop's keel and places her load waterline parallel to the base. A good go with Brasso made the posts shine.

 

If I was as good at this hobby as I should be, I would have fabricated cradles from solid brass stock but I'm not ready for that, so used the kit-supplied ones. I wondered about brass paint but feared that that would look bad against genuine metal, so went for black instead. That should make little visual impression, once the model is perched on top. A dab of CA glue attached each cradle to its post.

 

Last night, all that came together and gave me:

 

 

{Please don't notice that the base for a little boat model has a much nicer surface finish than the kitchen table it is resting on! My wife has been after me to re-finish that table for years.}

 

The posts are only push-fit into the base for now, as the tops of the cradles will need bevelling to match the hull, once that is ready. If they will stay in place, I will keep them removable and so be able to polish the brass from time to time. Either way, I think I have a base that will not disgrace the finished model. Now I need to get on with that, in the hope that it will not disgrace its base 😀

 

Trevor