Eric McKee’s 10 ft clinker workboat by Kenchington - Scale 1:12 – Card half-model reproduced as full-hull in wood

[Kenchington]

A lifetime ago, small boats in Britain and much of northwestern Europe were (almost) all clinker-built – what those of us in North America would call “lapstrake”. My own first real experience in a boat, back in the early ‘60s, was in a small clinker rowing boat (in the harbour of Schull, County Cork, which my parents had chosen for our annual holiday and where they rented that boat for our use). My only two vivid memories of that time are of discovering that even a small boy of less than 10 could move a laden boat by oars alone and, secondly, checking the 3-inches of freeboard when there were four adults and two children aboard (which I would now see as appallingly dangerous, especially as wearable lifejackets hadn’t yet been thought of). In later years, I got to sail clinker-built dinghies, though plywood and GRP were fast replacing them. Meanwhile, other clinker boats were everywhere: Commercial fishing boats, yacht tenders, motor launches of many kinds, even Royal Navy ship’s boats. Long after, and in Nova Scotia, I even owned and maintained a lapstrake boat of my own – a St.Margaret’s Bay trap skiff, converted to recreational use and given a sail by the previous owner. All of which is to say that clinker boats were a big part of my personal experience, as much as they were a big part of the maritime history of northern and western Europe.

 

Yet, despite spending time in them, the techniques of clinker building were a mystery to me for the first decade of our acquaintance. As Eric McKee put it in 1971: Nothing had been published on that topic as clinker was “too difficult for the amateur and too elementary for the professional” to need any written explanation – every apprentice boatbuilder having started out building clinker boats, under a master’s guidance, before moving on to grander things. Fortunately, while I was getting my first, childhood experience of the type, the National Maritime Museum (the Greenwich one) still saw its mission as including preserving and promulgating the fast-fading traditional world of seafaring. As part of that, McKee was supported in preparing a brief (30 pages) but superb account of how clinker boats were actually built, with almost enough detail for any experienced woodworker to construct one. The Museum published it in 1972 as Clenched Lap or Clinker – still perhaps the best account of how it was done (and sometimes still is):

I picked up a copy in Greenwich, probably only a few years later, and finally understood.

 

Besides its valuable text, the booklet’s centrefold is printed on cardstock, showing all of the parts needed to construct a half-model of a 10 ft clinker workboat (at 1;16 scale), including an ingenious jig to keep the moulds lined up while the strakes were glued in place:

 

While primarily educational (and highly recommended for anyone wanting to get to grips with the technique), that card kit builds into a pretty little model, which is also as structurally accurate as a card model reasonably could be. I still have mine after half a century, albeit rather battered now:

Still, any half-model is only half a model and card is a step away from the real thing, so McKee’s kit always left me wanting more.

 

So, clinker boats were a part of my formative years and McKee's model of one was part of that, making it something of an emotional target, now that I have returned to model building. While working on the ModelShipways Norwegian pram, it occurred to me that I could combine the techniques learned from that build with McKee’s card shapes and finally create a whole-hull, wooden version of the model I made so long ago – with a change in scale to 1:12 in order to match the pram. With the latter model finally completed completed and the Muscongus Bay lobster sloop under construction, I figure it is time to get serious.

 

Even so, it may be many weeks before I start shaping timber. However, for anyone else contemplating a similar build, the really interesting part is likely to be in the re-drafting from the printed card to templates for wooden pieces. So I will start this build log now and add to it as and when the pre-build planning proceeds.

 

The first step of all was to get a new copy of McKee’s booklet, as the cardstock centrefold of my old one was long ago cut up. Fortunately, there are many copies available through AbeBooks, some quite reasonably priced even with international postage included. Next up was to make high-resolution scans of the card centrefold, which I have done.

 

And, no, I will not be posting those high-res scans. The booklet is Crown copyright and, while I have no qualms about building its model my way, I'm not about to broadcast the original material. If you want more than the blurred versions shown above, you'll need to buy your own copy!

 

More later ...

 

Trevor

Edited Saturday at 01:24 AM by Kenchington

[thibaultron]

I'd forgotten there was a model in the center fold. I just bought a second copy so I can build the card model, and still have the first complete book.

[wefalck]

Had this booklet for many years, don’t remember when I bought it during my repeated visits to the NMM, when it was still intact.

In the mid-1990s I used the half-model as a template for the dinghy for my late 1860s steam-tug project in 1:60 scale - mainly because the strakes were developed, which came very handy at this scale.

The model was constructed over a wooden plug with bent wooden frames and strakes made from bakelite paper. Transom and all internal timbering again are wood.

Unfortunately the 5 cm long model is a bit obscured by the tug‘s deck fittings.

 

Edited Saturday at 09:41 AM by wefalck

[Kenchington]

@wefalck, your version will be an inspiration for my hoped-for model-to-be! Yours is a beautiful piece.

 

Trevor

[wefalck]

Thanks for your kind words.

 

I am actually planning a miniature version in 1:160 scale for my current project.

[Kenchington]

Moving ahead with planning for the model:

 

McKee’s booklet gives full instructions for building his card model but deals more generally with the full-size boat. It does not include the plans for that (though the essentials can be reconstructed from the printed card), while the information it does give s scattered through the text, figures and glossary. So an initial step has to be a read-through and extraction of details, starting with what, in the modelling world, could be called a “parts list”. I’ll accompany that with such of the scantlings as McKee specified – those for full-size construction given here. Throughout, I will use his terminology, though he emphasized how variable the accepted usage was across the length and breadth of Britain, let alone further afield. (At least, I will use McKee’s version except for his choice of the ugly and confusing “stempost” for the stem.) So:

 

BACKBONE

Keel: Sided 2 inches, moulded 2 ½ inches

Hog: Sided 5 inches, moulded 2 ½ inches

Stem: Sided 2 inches

Apron: Sided 5 inches

Deadwood

Sternpost

Wedge

Transom: 1 1/8 inches thick

 

SKIN

Planks (10 strakes per side: Strake diagram provided in booklet): 3/8 inch thick

Gunwales

Fillers (where needed between gunwale and sheerstrake): Moulded ½ inch

Timbers (13 or 14 full, 3 pairs of cants): Sided ¾ inch, moulded ½ inch

 

MOULDS (2 for full-size, 3 for card model)

 

INTERNAL FITTINGS

Risings (1 pair)

Breasthook

Quarter knees (1 pair)

Plates and toe cleats for crutches

Thwarts (2)

Thwart knees (2 per thwart)

Thwart pillars (1 per thwart), stepped in morticed blocks on hog

Stern bench 

Side benches

Bottom boards, on skirting rails

Sternsheets

Ringbolt through apron and stem (for painter)

 

EXTERNAL FITTINGS

Rubbers (1 per side)

Jack Nichols (1 pair)

Bilge rails (1 per side)

Landlists (along lands of bottom strakes)

Brass strip from stemhead to around transom heel (Might need ones on bilge rails too)

 

Fastenings are not listed here, as they are replaced by glue in a model. However, the clenched nails should be noticeable internally, even if painted over. If those are represented in a model, their pitch along the strake laps should be 6 times the plank thickness, so a nail every 2 ¼ inches. Every third nail passes through a timber as well as the lapped strakes.

 

 

At 1:12 scale, 3/8 planks equate to 1/32 basswood, which is easily found. (My local Great Hobbies store carries ModelExpo sheets.) The transom will need to be thinned down from 1/8 basswood, which should also serve for the moulds. The timbers can be worked out of 1/16 strip. Most of the fittings can probably be made out of bits and pieces in my scrap pile. 

 

I have a mind to make the backbone (excluding the transom) from cherry, to make it a bit more robust than it would be in basswood, especially as it will need a lot of shaping for the rabbets and bearding. A sheet of 1/4 inch should give me more than enough material.

 

Trevor

[Harvey Golden]

This is great to see!  I didn't know about his book on Clinker boats, but am a big fan of his "Working Boats of Britain"-- his pen and ink drawings are about as good as they get (up there with Adkins, Manning, Paris, Af Chapman, etc.). My only (successful) experience with Lapstrake is a finger-size pram for my Gjøa-- I'd like to brush up on it, and it sounds like that's the perfect book and method to use. Will follow along....

Best, 

H-

[Kenchington]

I do recommend McKee's booklet on clinker construction -- and no less after re-reading it now than I did from memory of a first reading decades ago. I have his "Working Boats" too, though I still prefer March's "Inshore Craft of Britain". Still, they are more complementary than in competition, for us as readers.

 

Trevor

[wefalck]

Looking forward to see, how your project develops!

 

When I build the miniature, I developed a wooden former from the 'bulkheads' include in MdKee's card-model. Over this the 0.4 mm x 0.4 mm wooden frames were bent and then over it the stem-keel-sternpost part was fastened. The transom, of course, was also attached before planking. If I remember well, the planks as drawn by McKee fitted quite well over this structure.

The little brochure on clinker planking was published as a sort of by-product, while McKee was working on his 'Working Boats'. The latter is a more functional and constructional analysis than a comprehensive catalogue of all the crafts around Britain.

Edited 21 hours ago by wefalck

[Kenchington]

I have to correct an error in the "parts list". I had:

 

14 hours ago, Kenchington said:

Bottom boards, on skirting rails

Sternsheets

 

Taking a bit more care in studying McKee's words, I realized that the "skirting rails" are fastened to the timbers on either side of the bottom boards, which fit between those rails, not on them.

 

The boards are held together by being nailed to cross battens, though there is something unclear. McKee says that the boards are made in port and starboard halves, so the battens cannot span across the hull. What stops them from collapsing along the centreline? Maybe the battens rest directly on the hog, though that would put the boards very near the bottom of the boat. Maybe there was an extra, lengthwise batten nailed to the hog for the cross battens to rest on. Perhaps the answer will come clear as construction proceeds.

 

McKee does say that the bottom-board halves were kept in place by three turnbuckles evenly spaced down the centre of the hog -- which seems to mean that the boards themselves did not meet on the centreline, even though the ends of the cross battens likely did.

 

He is even less clear about the sternsheets -- by which he meant the place for the feet of anyone sitting aft (rather than the after seats or the general after seating area, as in the historical meaning of the term). He does say "secured by screws" but may have meant that for the seating rather than the foot support. In his glossary, he calls the sternsheets a "level platform", suggesting a continuous surface rather than one with gaps between boards. Whether fixed in place or removable, built of boards, a sheet of plywood or even a grating, the sternsheets will need some support underneath. The card model has fold-down ends that rest on the hog and the planks, so there should probably be two cross timbers (one each end of the sternsheets), with space for limber holes either side of the hog.

 

If I'm feeling really silly by the time I get that far, maybe I will try making an elegant grating to fill the space!

 

 

Trevor

[wefalck]

I don't remember and can't see very clearly what I did for the floorboards, but I think they were subdivided into four sections, a small triangula one at the bow, the two main ones along the boat, and another triangular one a the stern. They have be broken down into section that are quite easy to remove so that one can bail out the boat, even when out on the sea.

 

I think, if you make paper templates for them and try out what works once the thwarts and stern-sheets are in place, that will give you guidance on how they should be constructed. One has to also think about placing the footrests for the rowers at the right place on the board. The analytical sections in 'Working Boats' give good guidance on that.

 

Looking at my images, I have the feeling that I put the row-locks too close to the thwarts, though I think I took McKee's sketch of the anatomy of rowing as guidance.

 

[Kenchington]

The standard rowing position on my full-size boat has me astride the centre plate case, so free to move fore or aft until comfortable. When making up a removable thwart for the forward rowing position, I just got settled in the after one and measured from my seat to the rowlocks.  A bit empirical but it works!

 

I agree that the boat really needs stretchers for the oarsmen's feet. McKee named them in his booklet but did not include them in his card model. Maybe something to add?

 

Trevor

[wefalck]

Having owned a rowing boat (or rather used my grandfather's) I was aware of the ergonomically correct position for rowing. I actually did not include the stretchers/foot-rests in my model, because it represented a working dinghy for the tug, in which they may get in the way of handling ropes etc. A decision at the expense of rowing efficiency. For a boat designed for moving from A to be B, I would include them.

 

I think in such boats the thwarts would be fixed, as they are stiffening elements of the construction, which is why they are further strengthed with knees.