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

[Kenchington]

Steps 10 & 11 completed: Garboards in!

 

The three-layered spine of the model has only its outer layers full-length, the central layer being broken for the centreboard and the rudder shaft. However, only the central layer reaches down to the bottom of the keel, forward to the cutwater and aft to the outer edge of the sternpost. The corresponding parts of the outer spine layers get added in Step 10 of the instructions, leaving a narrow gap which serves as the rabbets for the planks.

 

Each of starboard and port, there are three pieces, forming the edges of stem, keel and post respectively. There is also a plank-thick spacer piece to help check that the rabbet is properly sized. All that went together very easily, except that dry-fitting the keel pieces showed that one bulkhead needed more fairing to create enough space for the garboards. While doing that, I thought of another check: I traced the edge of a bulkhead onto a piece of card held against the spine, cut around my pencil line, reversed the card and checked the other side of the bulkhead for symmetry. Several of the bulkheads are too encumbered with bits and pieces for that to work, while asymmetry amidships won't be very noticeable. But I did check Bulkheads 1, 2, 3 and 8, finding that they were all so close to symmetrical that I could not be sure to find the deviations.

 

With that, it was time to get out and clean up the garboards, give each one 5 minutes in freshly boiled water and then shape it into place. I have noted before that this kit has the challenges of being of single-plank construction and having some complex curves. On the positive side, David Antscherl has done all of the laying out and splining for us, so the task should mostly be simple fitting of laser-cut pieces.

 

The starboard garboard certainly went on very easily and smoothly, so I added the port one and allowed them to dry together:

 

They have to take up a very pronounced twist in the run:

but the wet basswood is forgiving and took the required shape without trouble. Both garboards then fell into place almost naturally, with glue to keep them there:

The forward end of one garboard did rise a little in its rabbet but not enough to be worth ungluing. Also, one of the planks rose a bit free of one bulkhead and needed gluing back down, with a rubber band and Lego blocks to maintain pressure. Otherwise, all was well and the shape of the garboards is lovely -- a credit to David's planking skills more than to my fitting of the pieces.

 

No photographs yet, but I have pressed ahead and have the next strake drying overnight, ready for proper fitting in the morning.

 

Trevor

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Step 12: Strake 1 (first above the garboard) fitted.

 

Planking proceeded as smoothly as yesterday, with Strake 1 (which had dried overnight) going into place without much problem. I used a dab of yellow glue on each bulkhead, white glue in the rabbets and between the strakes. I started by fitting the forward end (as per the instructions), reaching back across three bulkheads and held by finger pressure without clamps. Then I did the length across two more bulkheads and then another two, before trimming the after end of the plank to meet the sternpost rabbet. Finally glued to Bulkhead 8 and the rabbet, then repeated on the other side of the hull:

I also trimmed and re-shaped the centreboard (see the angle cut off, tucked in the corner of the above image). Perhaps because of the way I fixed the issue of the pivot position and the slot of the control rod, the board did not fully retract into its trunk. That is not really an issue for a model but it would be annoying in the full-size boat, as a protruding centreboard would mean that she couldn't be easily hauled ashore for maintenance. (At the least, it would need blocks placed to keep the weight off the board.) I waited to do the trimming until I had the garboards in place to add support to the sides of the centreboard slot, but did the job before adding Strake 1. Retracting the board also meant that I could square up the bottom face off the keel.

 

The fit of the two strakes done so far isn't perfect, though nothing that a touch of filler in the rabbets and a gentle sanding elsewhere won't fix:

  

I am now giving the glue time to set thoroughly before wetting and fitting Strake 2. Hopefully, I will get that dry and glued on with time enough to have Strake 3 shaped and drying overnight.

 

Trevor

 

 

[Waldemar]

On 11/8/2025 at 3:29 PM, Kenchington said:

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

 

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

 

 

I was just looking through your presentation and, strangely, came across part of my collection at your place . But seriously, I have to protect my hippos collection like the apple of my eye, because every now and then someone wants one of them as a gift. I explain that it's a sort of collection and that's what gives it its added value, but I can see that this doesn't stop them from being disappointed by being refused... 

 

 

 

[Kenchington]

My hippos came from my wife, who picked them up while at a business meeting in Namibia. I'm not sure why she rejected them (too much potamous and not enough hippo for a horsewoman?) but they passed to my shelves instead.

 

If you and I ever get to meet in person, they can migrate to join your herd. I dare say they would welcome the company of their own kind!

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Strake 2 in place now. For its drying, I added pegs to keep it even with the edge of Strake 1, in addition to the clips on the bulkheads that hold the two strakes together:

That seemed to help the final fit, so I am learning as I go! It will still need filler and sanding, and I will have to do better when I get to the NRG half-hull, but all should be fine for this little sloop once painted.

 

With three strakes in place, the model can sit on its stand, so it is beginning to show its final shape:

I may have over-done the extra height in those pillars but they could readily be shortened, if that looks desirable in the end.

 

Two things I would have done differently, if I had known in time:

 

First, Bulkhead 1 is too full down near the keel. It's not so bad as to be noticeable without a close look but the planks leave the stem at a wide angle, then bend too sharply as they pass the bulkhead. A bit more removal of material during fairing would give the hull a sweeter line near its forefoot. Still, nothing to worry about:

A more important point, for any future builder of the kit wanting to learn from my mistakes:

 

The instructions call for the garboard to be fitted starting at the stem and working aft, whereas Strake 3 is to be fitted around the sternpost and then working forwards. Both make every sense but I continued the stem-to-stern route for Strakes 1 & 2. For Strake 1, that was probably OK. However, Strake 2 needs a curved hood end, to match the shape of the rabbet in the sternpost and that would have much better been done before working forwards. As it is, I have a mess to hide with filler -- not so bad on the starboard side:

but worse to port. Nothing that can't be fixed but I would prefer to have got it right the first time!

 

I have pressed on as fast as soaking Strake 3 and clamping both starboard and port sides to the hull for drying. However, they will need trimming to fit against the centreline plank abaft the rudder port and I fear that they will need re-wetting and a second drying before gluing. I'll likely only be able to get that one strake on tomorrow.

 

And then I hit an odd problem: I had fit the centreboard control rod as the deck went on, figuring that the narrow slot between the deck halves would keep the rod in place in its hole in the board. But, as I twisted and turned, fitting Strake 3 for drying, the rod fell out 😧

 

It was not hard to fit it again, with only three strakes then in place on the port side, but I will have to add a bit of scrap between two bulkheads to prevent it coming loose again. That is for tomorrow.

 

Trevor

 

[druxey]

On most models, as in full size practice, the strake consists of more than one plank, so you can work from both the bow and stern post. The continuous strake is one limitation of this kit.

[Kenchington]

Limitation or challenge? It is all a learning experience, after all!

 

Anyway, we get to work with easily bent basswood (not pine, let alone oak), and the hood ends don't need to have strong, watertight seating in the rabbets. For me, this is a first opportunity to see a carvel-construction hull come together -- something I have read about for decades (and sometimes written about too) but never had happen under my own hands. I'm not complaining about the challenges!

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Added Strake 5 this morning. With the garboard, that makes a total of 6 out of the 11 strakes, so I am half-way through the planking and beginning get tidy outcomes. One unwanted hollow has emerged immediately abaft the sternpost, whether because I faired Bulkhead 9 badly or as a result of my having to reconstruct the model's skeleton in that area following damage, I cannot tell. That aside, it has been remarkable how easily everything has fallen into place, with only minor errors on my part. The strake edges are falling a little short of the tick marks on the bulkheads but consistently so. The kit is designed with extra width in the steerstrake. I can only hope that it will be wide enough!

 

No images from today's work yet but I do want to illustrate two points that I made earlier. First, the excess fullness of Bulkhead 1, low down towards the keel:

Note the curvature as the strakes cross the bulkhead, causing them to meet the stem at a blunter angle than the deck does, whereas they should be sharper if anything. It is not a problem seen with the higher strakes.

 

On the positive side, the spiling of the kit's planks is almost unbelievably well done. Consider Strake 3. That came out of the fourth space in this basswood sheet (the one with the little notch for the sternpost, in the strake's bottom-right corner):

A nice, smooth, flat curve, albeit of varying width. Yet, once bent and glued in place, it looks like:

 

That's an S-bend in side view, superimposed on a twist of about 45°! My attempt to construct it in 3D will need some filler to hide the mistakes but the fact that I could make it at all comes down to the quality of the kit. And that's all to the credit of David A. and his spiling. Wow!

 

Trevor

 

[Kenchington]

With Strake 5 in place, she looked like:

 

Since that stage, I have added Strake 6 and have Strake 7 drying overnight. This beginning to feel like a routine, while probably means that I am about to make a major, silly mistake!

 

Progress may slow down from here as I do not have enough small spring clamps to handle the planks on both sides at the same time.

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Progress did not slow today, to my surprise, and Strake 8 is in place. I hope to have Strake 9 bent and drying overnight, though that's not done yet.

 

However, I did have a major problem, from a silly mistake: I had cleaned the char off the port-side Strake 8 and was giving its flat faces a quick wipe with a very fine-grade sanding stick -- when a third of its length simply broke away and shot to the floor! I can't see a weakness in the wood, so I must have become too casual and pressed too hard.

 

My first thought was a repair, with a butt strap for strength, but that would have made a hard point, altering the bend of the strake. So I made a new one from scrap, using the original strake's slot in the basswood sheet as a template, then cutting and sanding. I clamped the broken parts to the new and sanded until their edges were flush, then finished by ensuring that the new piece matched the starboard-side strake. (I figured that an exact match, starboard to port, was more critical than an exact match to the kit's spiling, though any deviation was very small anyway.)

 

So planking continues, as does the emergence of a hollow between Bulkheads 8 and 9, either side of the sternpost. I'm blaming that on the need to re-attach the snapped-off after skeleton, though insufficient fairing of Bulkhead 8 may have contributed.

 

More tomorrow,

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Planking completed -- though it did not go easily.

 

My progress was slowed more by a sudden deadline (as in: a deadline for the work I get paid to do 😖), more than by the challenges of the model. Still, I did move ahead and Strake 9 went on well enough, though a slight slip at the transom  induced me to release the glue and try again. That only made things worse.

 

The big problem came when I checked the gap between Strake 9 and the deck. As I had begin to fear, it was wider than the kit's sheerstrakes, especially on the port side, where the sheerstrake was a bit more than 2mm too narrow amidships. That should not have been possible, especially as the kit is designed to allow some excess material. I can only guess that I pressed the wet strakes together so tightly (while they were clamped for drying) that I squashed them a little.

 

I bent the kit-supplied sheerstrakes anyway and toyed with the idea of adding a thin band between them and Strake 9. That looked like it would lead to an ugly mess, so I decided to make new, wider strakes, with the cut-out of the kit part as a template. While I was at it, I made them much wider (rather than find them not wide enough) and added some length too, as my muddled stern projects a bit further than intended. Even the standard parts are too wide and too long to get replacements out of any scrap left from the kit nut, back while working on the dory and pram, I had bought a length of ModelExpo 1/32 basswood sheet just in case a need arose, so I could use that.

 

All went OK though to the shaping and drying phase:

That's the kit-supplied sheerstrake in the foreground and my replacement on the hull (though set low, to prevent the rubber bands from warping the top of the strake). It was only with the new wood wet that I saw how different it is from the kit material: Much coarser grain and prominent rays.

 

With the sheerstrakes bent and dried, I confronted issues that the instructions skip over. The stem rabbet does not follow the profile of the stem but has a sharp turn to vertical where the hood end of the sheerstrake fits. The deck, however, carries on past to meet the stem where the rabbet would be if there was no angle. I trimmed the deck, then shaped the end of each sheerstrake, mostly by trial and error.

 

I was also unhappy with the fit of the sheerstrakes far aft, so I glued them in place from bow to midships, left the model for the glue to fully set, then got to work with a rasp -- mostly waiting Bulkhead 9 but also the lower edge of the starboard sheerstrake. Perhaps I should have re-wetted the strakes but I managed to get everything glued in place, even though it needed a second go with glue in a couple of places.

 

All of that left me with a fully-planked model but certainly not a nicely planked one. The sheerstrakes projected above the deck, as I had intended:

but worse was the general mess that I had made of the job:

I am still hopeful that I can make an acceptable end result, with plenty of filling and sanding, but it is not what I was hoping for! (Just have to keep reminding myself that this is supposed to be a learning experience 🙂)

 

I decided to trim the projecting plank, before I caught it on something and caused damage. With plane and sanding stick, I brought the sheerstrakes down flush with the deck edge, then turned to saw and again sanding sticks to get the after ends of the planking flush to the transom. With that, the current state of development looks like:

 

 

Much, much more to be done but it will have to wait until tomorrow!

 

Trevor

[JacquesCousteau]

Looks good to me! I feel like with a bit of filler and sanding it should smooth out nicely. Challenges with the sheer strake aside, the kit planks seem to go together very nicely. I almost regret going with lapstrake planking on mine, as it has made what I was hoping would be a straightforward, fairly simple build into something rather more complex.

 

As for the more prominent grain on the sheer strake, I wonder if a bit of shellac or some other sort of sanding sealer would smooth it out? (I seem to remember that you're planning on painting this hull, I could be wrong though). I recently tried shellac for the first time on a different project and was pleasantly surprised by how smooth it turned out and how straightforward it was to apply, and apparently it takes paint very well.

[Ferrus Manus]

1 hour ago, Kenchington said:

All of that left me with a fully-planked model but certainly not a nicely planked one.

I just popped in on this build log, but I have to disagree and say that this is one of the better plank jobs I've seen on this kit. Keep up the good work! 

Keep in mind that these were work boats, and they wouldn't have looked nice anyway. People love to model them as yachts, which is how many of the real boats have been restored as. 

Edited December 21, 2025 by Ferrus Manus

[Kenchington]

Thank you both for your kind comments!

 

Workboat, yes. So the strakes should be evident as strakes, but without a step between one and the next -- each section essentially a series of flats, whereas the outer faces of a yachts planks would more likely be shaped to a curve, to make a smooth surface. Still, I do need to reduce the steps between some of the strakes.

 

JC: I am not (so far) worried about the surface finish of the sheerstrake. Maybe that will cause me some grief but I'm expecting sanding and priming to be enough.

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Four rounds of applying filler and five of sanding has brought me to:

 

Good enough to be getting on with -- and a whole lot easier than I had been fearing!

 

Next step in the instructions calls for fitting the toe rails, then the rub rails. However, I aim to have those in contrasting colours, so I will mask off the rub rail area and the deck, then spray on some primer tomorrow. Probably spray, sand, fill, spray again and repeat, but time will tell.

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Ten days of only intermittent work on my smack. The grey, spray primer went on easily and with no problems at the time, but I soon came to regret applying it. 

 

It revealed a few hollows that needed more filler but no second coat seemed worthwhile, so I turned to a white (artist's) acrylic primer, then a warm-white top coat. The problem was that the acrylics had poor opacity, so I had to put them on thick to hide the grey, then sand to get a nicer surface than the paste-like effect of the paint. The sanding let the grey show through, calling for another coat ... and on and on. I lost almost any sign of the planking strakes, giving me a hull that is too yacht-like for my taste. Finally, I applied a very slightly thinned coat in a (largely unsuccessful) attempt to fill the defects in the paintwork, followed by a polish with a sanding stick so worn that it has almost no abrasive effect left. I am not at all happy with the outcome but there seems no point in repeating to the process any further, so I added the rub rails and toe rails.

 

The rub rails are very thin and easily bent with fingers. I pre-painted three surfaces black, leaving the back bare for glue. Meanwhile, I had kept  line of 1mm masking tape on the hull, in the required position, so that there was bare wood to provide somewhere for the glue to grip -- though the masking wasn't perfect and I had too scrape out some paint. Each rail needs a slight bevel at the forward end, so that it can sit flush against the stem, but otherwise all was easy and the contrast against white topsides looks nice. (I did consider a bare-wood effect, with a golden-oak stain on the rails. However, in the finished boat, they merge into the black-painted headworks, so I thought black would go better throughout.)

 

The toe rails were much more awkward. The kit instructions warn that they are thick enough to need bending with steam, not hot water. In practice, I found them easily handled with my usual soak in water boiled in the kettle. I shaped them on the sheerstrake, with rubber bands to hold them there while drying into the required 3D curve. Then I painted them with red ochre, to give the finished model a splash of colour without violating historical authenticity for the time and place. Finally, I sanded the outer edges of the deck to give the glue a grip there too. So far so good. However, there was enough spring-back after the rails dried that it was hard to get them properly aligned with the deck edge, made all the worse by there being nothing to clamp them to. In the end, I surrounded the hull and both rails with multiple rubber bands, then lifted those off the rail that I was fitting by putting Lego blocks under the bands. That let me get a glue brush under one section of the rail, then held it in place with finger pressure, removed the Lego so that the bands supported the glue while it set thoroughly -- and moved to the next section, working from the bow aft, before repeating with the other rail.

 

The result is a mess of surplus glue and worn paint that needs cleaning up, along with rail ends that need trimming, but I think all will do well enough in the end. There are only a couple of spots where the rail is not neatly aligned with the deck edge and I can live with those:

 

The instructions offer an optional extra of cutting a small scupper in each toe rail, after it is in place. But that raises a question of where to put it. With the boat upright on her mooring, rainwater on deck would pool against the rail abreast the cockpit. As the boat heeled to the wind, however, the low point would move forward, so spray would collect abreast of the live wells. I figured that three scuppers per side would really be needed but I didn't fancy drilling them out after the rails were in place. Instead, I used a file with a curved upper surface and worked on the underside of each rail until I had enough space to get the tip of the file in after the rail was glued down. They look like:

That's out of focus but does also show the poor state of my paint job!

 

The risk, of course, was that the cut scuppers would so weaken the rail that it snapped before being securely in place. As the second photo shows, I did have one break, but it will be easy enough to hide when I tidy up.

 

So progress is slow and imperfect, but I am progressing!

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

My past week has been better for sitting at a computer, dodging stress, than for careful crafting of anything. As a result, after promising myself that I would never get stuck into more than one model at a time, I am now deep into the preliminary thinking for two others -- while my Muscongus Bay boat has languished. Still, I have managed some progress: Tidied up the ends of the toerails and rubrails, cleared up some of the excess glue and touched up the paint (though the camera shows that there is more tidying to be done):

My attempt to file the scuppers in the toerails before gluing those on was a bust, though it did save me drilling a hole for the saw blade that (as per the instructions) I used to open up the holes. Once tidied up with a flat file, they turned out OK:

Meanwhile, I added the bow chocks, cutting them carefully to suit their role as partners for the bowsprit, while shaping grooves for their second role as fairleads for the anchor warp or mooring pendant. Those, I painted black, while extending the contrast colour down to the rubrail. Once the tailboards are in place, that should make for a unified appearance of the head.

 

I also made and fitted a sampson post. The kit one broke on me (twice!), so I made another from some basswood stock. The kit version was two parts, glued together, but both pieces are laser-cut in such a way that they have cross-grain -- a bad mistake by somebody. Mine has the grain along its length. The instructions call for the post's crossbar (I forget the proper term!) to be made of brass rod. Rather than fuss with blackening the brass, I used a piece of stainless steel (left over from making fishing gear for my dory) instead. I stained the sampson post with golden oak, which came out far darker than my previous use of the same stain, then finished it with wipe-on-poly:

I'm quite happy with how that turned out.

 

It does raise a general point, though: Ships and boats (almost) always have a lot of deck fittings. Many of those are fitted on the deck, even if they have fastenings that pass through it to the stronger structures below. However, in full-size reality some things, like a sampson post, pass through the deck and are firmly built into the hull structure to provide sufficient strength. In most models, of course, those fittings are placed on the deck but they should not look like they are. (For one example, to my eye, hatchway coamings that too obviously sit on top of a planked deck can really detract from a model's appearance.) The present kit has a hole in the deck and space in the structure below for an insert much narrower than the exposed part of the sampson post, which needs a shoulder where it sits on the deck. To get my post to sit nicely and look like it might extend up from the keel, I cut that shoulder to a careful square, with the shoulders on the sides of the post angled to match the sheer of the deck. I wasn't sure that that would work but it seems to have turned out well.

 

So I have now arrived at:

Next up will be the support blocks for the rowlocks, closely followed by the cockpit coaming -- blocks and coaming forming a joint structure when all is done.

 

Trevor

 

[JacquesCousteau]

Nice progress! The black extending down from the bow chocks looks really sharp.

[Kenchington]

Moving along ... if only slowly. I have the cockpit coaming in, while its extensions and the sides of the cuddy's coachhouse are drying:

 

First step was the pads for the rowlocks. No issues there, except for them being small and fiddly. They follow the same concept as the ones on the Norwegian pram, though less elegant in shape. O pre-painted the exposed sides and glued them in place with CA -- partly for better control of their positions but also because the deck is already coated with Wipe-on-Poly and I didn't want to have to sand that away.

 

What isn't stated in the instructions is that those pads cover and reinforce the junctions between the forward and after parts of the coamings, giving the tiny pieces a key role.

 

The instructions indicate that bending the coaming and (even more) the coachhouse sides is challenging. However, that much went easily for me. I gave each piece (at different times) five minutes in freshly boiled water (my usual treatment before bending basswood), then gently worked the wet wood into about the right position and let it dry. With the bend making dry-fitting viable (as it is not with the parts straight), the major task was trimming, trying and trimming some more until all slots were wide enough to take the part that need to fit and everything was shaped up. That was made more difficult by my closing off the sides of the cockpit but I had to cut away at the steps in the bulkheads where the coaming fits too.

 

With everything more-or-less fitting, I gave the wood a second soak in boiled water and worked it into position for a final drying -- as with the forward piece in the photo above. The coaming needed an extra step: Opening up of a slot for the tiller. The instructions call for saw cuts across the grain, then cutting away the unwanted material. I didn't fancy ragged edges from a saw blade so put a fresh chisel blade in my craft knife and sliced the across-grain cuts. That went well.

 

That was the quick part of the task. Then came priming of everywhere that will be exposed and hence painted. The water-based acrylic took much of the bend out of the wood but that didn't prove a trouble in the end. Primer was followed by multiple coats of paint -- warm white (representing white lead) outboard and yellow ochre inboard. With all dry, I worked the coaming into place, though it proved to need more trimming to get it settled down.

 

The instructions allow for the coaming being mounted too high, after which its top surface can be trimmed. The trouble then would be the tiller hole extending above deck. I cut away below instead, so that I could settle the coaming downwards, but still ended up with the hole almost visible from outboard.

 

But all is in now and, as in the photo, I have moved on to the forward part of the structure. As can also be clearly seen, there is filling, sanding and painting to be done but that can come as one operation once everything is in place.

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Getting a half-step ahead of myself, while painting the rowlock pads and coaming, I also did the hatches for the wet wells. The kit-supplied ones are just thin rectangles of basswood, which can end up looking (in build logs at least) like nothing more than coloured oblongs on the deck. I wanted something better but there does not seem to be any surviving information on what the well-hatches of Muscongus Bay boats looked like, hence no foundation for improving the visual effect.

 

One possibility would be that the well-openings were simple holes in the deck. In that case, their covers could have extended down into the hole, with only a rim sitting on the deck -- hence much as the kit parts suggest. The trouble with that would be that all the muck brought aboard with the lobster traps could wash into the wells.

 

I think it more likely that there was a low coaming around each opening, hence that the hatches extended across the coamings and lapped down their outsides -- though not so far down as to touch the deck, for that would trap rainwater and promote rot. To represent that arrangement (while adding some visual interest to the model), I glued rectangles of thicker scrap on top of the kit hatches, rounded off edges and painted the hatches in the same neutral grey that I have used on the cockpit seats (chosen for the same practical reason, though also for visual variety and continuity). The lips formed by the thinner, smaller kit hatches should not be visible on the finished model but I touched those with black primer anyway, to give some shadow effect.

 

I won't add handles, as those would just be obstructions to our miniature lobsterman, when going forward to his cuddy or when moving traps on the bridge deck. He could easily get fingers under the sides of these hatches and lift them off, without added complications.

 

I won't glue the hatches to the model until the forward coamings (made of a piece with the coachhouse sides) are in place, as the hatches could restrict the space for fitting that awkward part. But, asa they are, the hatches look like:

One upright and the other inverted, to show its construction.

 

Trevor

[Kenchington]

Yesterday's work on the model leaves me with a mea culpa of sorts: Review of lots of build logs shows examples of people adding lovely detail to a basic kit, while getting the basics wrong. So, before launching into a description of my own cleverness, I will warn anyone following this thread that I ended up in a mess, that I have yet to resolve!

 

The big step that I was working on was adding the cuddy sides and forward portions of the coaming (running forward from the rowlocks, along the edges of the bridge deck/lobster wells to the cuddy bulkhead), which is the kit are made of one piece. The Instructions very properly warn about the difficulty of achieving the required bend at the forward end. That does need care but my approach of two soakings in freshly-boiled water, with a drying between and another after solved that challenge without trouble.

 

Where I ran into difficulties was in shaping the deck edge, slots in the deck, slots in and sides of some bulkheads, plus the various slots and projections in the cuddy-sides-and-coaming piece until the last of those would fit the rest. It was made no easier when repeated dry-fitting caused one of the coaming sides to break. (Rather than try a repair of the piece while loose, I figured I would glue it all together when the rest of the model provided some support. That did not go well.) In the end, I got to where I thought all was fitting nicely. It wasn't.

 

Before proceeding to glue the parts in place, I got too clever for myself.

 

The kit comes with an oblong opening, let's call it a "port", on each side (starboard and port) of the cuddy sides. Chapelle (who, we should remember, examined the remains of an old Muscongus Bay centreboarder and took details of fittings from that) shows such a port in his plan, so it is right that it's there in the model. However, the kit just leaves each port as an opening and I doubt that anyone would want to take the boat to sea like that: Every wave that breaks against the weather bow sends up a sheet of spray and an open port would let that into the cuddy -- which would soon become miserable. Yet, I also doubt that a lobsterman of the 1880s would have wanted to pay for the sort of heavy glass that could withstand the blow of a wave (glass like what can be seen in old ship's portlights). So how to let in light and air, when desired, but keep out spray?

 

I turned back to Chapelles' drawing and he has what looks like a sliding cover, set within a rectangular frame on the cuddy side. (His sliding part, if that is what it is, is marked off with a double line -- maybe glass within a frame but I suspect just some sort of panelling for decoration.) So that is what I aimed for.

 

I traced one opening from the kit part, laid Scotch tape over it, sticky-side up, then arranged strips of scrap 1/32 basswood to the intended shape of the frame:

Applied white glue to the bits, stuck onto the cuddy side, peeled off the tape and got:

Though my phone decided to focus on the wrong side of the curved kit part!

 

That's much the better of the two versions, starboard and port. (Why do difficult modelling tasks go well the first time, then fail on the second attempt? In my case, I fear that I start out taking care, then relax when the first go-round seems easy!) Anyway, it doesn't look too bad once painted and in place:

However, anyone wanting to follow me down this particular road would be well advised to use something thinner than 1/32 basswood -- which likely means using some sort of plastic rod. My frame is definitely too thick.

 

I still have to add the shutters, probably cut from card and coloured to resemble scrubbed pine. I will close off one shutter, to prevent cross-draughts blowing through the cuddy, but leave the other open enough for an airflow to the wood stove (needed to keep the lobsters from freezing during the winter fishery).

 

With that little extra added, I went to fit the long and, by this point, well-curved piece. It went nicely around the cuddy but the projecting coaming sides simply would not sit down firmly on the deck. White glue did not hold them there. Maybe I should have used CA. Maybe I should have cut off the tabs that are supposed to go into slots in the deck, relying instead on aligning everything by fingers alone. (Clamping isn't much of an option, as the thin piece of coaming can too readily bend sideways.) I'm left with quite the mess:

 

Note how the coaming is above the deck along each side. I'm not sure whether to try getting filler into those slots or else trim away the tabs, in the middle on each side, introduce some CA and press the coamings down into place. What I am not going to do is to try removing everything and re-gluing. I am sure that I would only make a bigger mess.

 

With so much patching-up to do, I decided to add the cuddy bulkhead, so that I could fix all the problems at one time, leaving the well covers off for now, so that they won't obstruct the required work. However, the bulkhead (or, rather, the covering of the kit's structural bulkhead) raises another opportunity for excessive cleverness:

 

The kit provides for our miniature lobsterman to enter the shelter of his cuddy through a hatchway kept closed by what the Instructions call a "sliding hatch cover" (set between runners on the coachroof) and a "companion cover (door)", modelled as a plain slab of wood, set between "side guides" on the bulkhead. I'm not sure why that arrangement was chosen, aside perhaps from ease of building, as rain or spray falling on the coachroof would find its way around the edges of the sliding hatch and into the cuddy.

 

What Chapelle showed, in contrast, was the arrangement standard on small sailing yachts up through the 1970s and maybe still today. (I haven't sailed anything like that in a long while now.) That arrangement has a sliding hatch on top of the rails it slides on, with sides that hang down outboard of those rails and ends that hang down between them. The forward end of the hatchway is closed off with a sill between the rails (invisible in a model), so any water getting under the hatch is stopped before it can flow down into the accommodation space. Meanwhile, the opening in the bulkhead has another sill (to exclude water sloshing around on deck) and, above, is closed off by washboards that drop into slots on either side. In the Muscongus Bay boat, the coachroof is so low that there is only really space for a single washboard but, if there are two or three, they have half-laps at bottom and top to stop the wind blowing in and bringing rain with it. Finally, when the hatch is slid shut, it overhangs the top of the washboard(s), keeping out the weather (and, given a hasp and padlock, also excludes any prying fingers).

 

For now, I have been able to delay the challenges of building a sliding hatch and only faced the washboard and side slots/guides.

 

Even before building those, the bulkhead piece has to be fitted to its place. My scribing of deck planking "seams", along with irregularities in shaping the bulkheads, has left me with a bulge in the deck, forward of the starboard lobster well hatch. I wasn't worried as I can hide that under a lobster trap before the model is finished, but it required a lot of shaping of the bulkhead, which left me with an asymmetric washboard. Nothing to be done now, except coil the trap's buoyline far forward to hide the problem!

 

I painted the bulkhead with yellow ochre, to match the rest of the inboard works and stained the kit's "side guides" with golden-oak, to give a nice contrast. To make life easier, I decided that the very small washboard could drop down to deck level, hiding an imaginary sill, so saved modelling one. The washboard itself is coated with ModelExpo clear finish, to resemble scrubbed pine. I drilled two finger holes to make it easier for the lobsterman to lift the board, when he wants to get below. I had planned to leave it at that, with just the side guides to suggest the slot structures into which the washboard slides. However, the washboard did not quite touch the guides. (I glued those in edge-on, to get more depth. Maybe the kit's intent was to have the wider side against the bulkhead.) So I added another pair of oak-stained strips and got a bit more realism, though the extra smearing of CA didn't help. The end result looked like:

And when in place on the model:

Not too bad, though it rather too obviously sits in top of the deck, rather than the planks butting against the bulkhead.

 

I will deal with the top of the washboard structure once I have the coachroof on and can figure out how to arrange the sliding hatch.

 

But, before then, I need to fix the mess I made of the coaming!

 

Trevor

 

 

P.S., for some readers who are confused by my above wording:

 

Contrary to a very common (but very lubberly!) error, a "hatch" is not a hole in a deck or other such surface. That is a "hatchway" (when it isn't a "ladder way" or some other variant). The "hatch" is the thing that covers the "hatchway", though in etymology I should say that the "hatchway" is the thing covered by the "hatch". Hence, the thing that slides over the coachroof of our lobsterboat, either giving or closing access to the cuddy, is a "sliding hatch", not a "hatch cover"!

 

 

[JacquesCousteau]

Very nice work, the window is a great touch of realism. I wonder if a thin sliver of basswood could serve as trim to cover the gaps you mentioned?

[Kenchington]

Thanks for the suggestion, JC, but even 1/32 basswood on both sides would triple the thickness of that coaming. I will bear the idea in mind, though, as it might be viable with card. I think I could paint that so that the "repair" would not be noticeable.

 

However, I'm going to start where I always planned to use filler, around the cockpit seats. If I get the feeling that I can handle the fine work with filler, I'll mask the deck either side of the coaming gaps and give it a try.

 

Trevor