Utrecht 1746 by flying_dutchman2 - FINISHED - Scale 1:48 - Dutch Statenjacht

[dgbot]

Marc,

  I always advize caution when gluing up frames.  When they are not the right dimension they can really screw you up down the line.  As Toni remarked take care of the problem now because later it will be too late and all the labor you are putting in will be for not.

David B

[Mirabell61]

Hi Marc,

 

Trust you are preparing for a great Job to be done on the Staatenjacht. Boxes full of Frame fragments look like a large 3D puzzle to me right now, guess all parts are clearly marked.

Nice Workshop susiduary on the lawn of your garden, thats the right attitude when the sun is shining..., wish you good process and fun with the build

 

Nils

[flying_dutchman2]

dgbot;

Thanks for the similar advice.

I removed the too thick of the frames and redid them so after measuring the hull I am off by 2mm.  Which is fine by me.

I also measured where the canon holes should be and I am good to go.

 

Mirabell61;

Lots of scrap wood which is always used for something.  Cutting and sanding wood is best done outside as I do not have a vacuum setup indoors to remove sawdust.  So I plan to do most of the cutting and sanding of wood in late spring, summer and fall.

 

Marc

[dgbot]

Marc, I miss being at Kurt's when you decide to bring it in.  I have the same problem here at my sisters.  I can go out to the workshop in the garage but She would strangle me in the condition I am in.  Ed likes to work in wood he has made a canoe as well as many other things.  But his toys are bigger than mine.

David B

[flying_dutchman2]

I hate to admit this as it is soooo embarrassing but I made a colossal mistake on the frames and cannot redo this.

So I went to Menards, Home Depot and Lowes and purchase more wood in 1/4 & 3/16the thickness. The boards are Aspen and plywood. I am starting over and this time it will be correct. It is to complicated to explain what I did.

 

Like I always say; "If you don't make a mistake, you don't make any." and " it is wood, one can redo".

Now that I have more time as all the plants are dormant, I can put some work in it and I have to finish the case for the "Mary" and also need to finish the rigging of the "Scout" which is a 54" cargo ship from a kit company "Sterling"

 

Marc

[dgbot]

Mark, I was told by my grandfather that he who has never made a mistake has never done anything.

David B

[mtaylor]

As a past victim of Murphy and "crap happens"... welcome to the club.  We're a vast club and meet everyday on MSW. 

[Piet]

Sorry to hear that version 1.0 augured in (airplane talk   ) but we are all looking forward to version 2.0.  Hey, as Mark has said we have already or will yet encounter the same situation.

Version 2.0 will be near perfect.  Looking forward to pictures.

 

Cheers, 

[dgbot]

I have been on first name with Murphy for several builds.  

David B

[flying_dutchman2]

Just an update.  After looking at both the book from Ab Hoving and Gil McArdle I am going to scrap the building of the Utrecht by McArdle.  I am following the Emke plans.  I am better in mm than inches (I was born with the metric system).  Also, the bulkheads in Emke's plans are easier to understand and how to form the boat.  The McArdle book will help with the pictures of what the model should look like. 
 
I will attempt to do the carving and I am a bit nervous about this. I see such beautifull work such as the "Prins Willem by Michiel".  If there is a problem I can order the pieces from Chuck as he has the master molds.

I call it a hybrid POF/POB built.  I have the bulkheads from Emke and added some more in between to shorten the distance of the gaps between the main bulkheads, get a more even flow of the lines and try to prevent the wobbling of the planking.  I had that problem with the Bounty but that was also before I learned about this site and how to avoid that problem. (pictures will follow)
 
When I decided to do the Utrecht as my first scratch I had grand ideas to follow this as a POF.  I got a bit overwhelmed so I retracted some ideas and after my mistake re-thought of what to do.  I feel comfortable that I can do what I am going to do. Furthermore, with following Emke's plans I set myself up to built more of the Dutch models he drew in CAD for the future.  Start small and move to big and more intricate and as always I am sticking to Dutch ships.
Marc

[flying_dutchman2]

What follows are pictures of my colossal mistake.

[flying_dutchman2]

These are the original frames that come with the plans from Emke.

no. 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 4.5, 5.5, 6.0 and 6.5

 

 

 

This is where I added some frames so all the spaces between the frames are 26mm.

no. 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0 and 6.5

 

 

 

Then for the heck of it I decided to add more frames and the spacing's between each frame is 10mm

This looks like a "big-gap POF. Too many frames as well, if it not going to be a POF

 

 

 

Conclusion: the Utrecht will be a POB with a total of 11 frames.

 

So far I have cut much wood and becoming very proficient cutting along the lines of the template. I enjoy this practice.

 

Any questions and/or comments are always appreciated.

Marc

[flying_dutchman2]

None of this is glued but it is to give me a general picture of what it is going to look like.

 

In the foreground is a keel made from scrap wood. The key here for me is the space between each frame, which is 26mm. I need to visualize everything to understand the building process. So I experiment a lot and make lots of demo’s. Probably also because this is my first scratch.

 

 

Behind the scrap keel are the frames with the spacers and each side has a long thin plank to visualize the shape of the ship.

 

 

Same as before but closer. The 3 – ½” glued pieces of basswood is going to be the bow. Easier to shape.

[flying_dutchman2]

Now for something completely different. (I know I am a bit scatterbrained).

I have been reading up on another method of building models and Ab Hoving calls this “shell first”. It is pretty interesting. The planking is not fastened to an assembly of ribs placed on the keel, but first the planking is secured to the keel as kind of a shell, after which the ribs are fitted in as a kind of reinforcement. One of the advantages is that the planking is always fair, that it nowhere shows hollow or bubbles and that it makes the design rather easy. It does not matter how the frames are fitted into the shell as long as they keep everything together.

 

In building the actual ships; as long as the timbers were securely attached, the rest did not matter too much. It was not necessary for the shipwright to produce good-looking frames on which the planking had to be fastened, as required by the other, “frame-first”, method. He only had to hold the planking together.

 

The important thing is that the Dutch way of building of the hull took very little time. They also invented “warehousing” which kept ready-made pieces available for ship building.

 

I am using the following books as examples and I have a PDF version from Nicolaes Witsens - Scheeps Bouw Konst Open Gestelt by A. J. Hoving or Nicolaes Witsen and Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age by A.J. Hoving, Diederick Wildeman (Creator), Alan Lemmers

[flying_dutchman2]

The following pictures is what the "shell-First" building looks like.

Shell-First Method

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am going to experiment with this method and will add the progress here as well. If it fails than nothing is lost. But I think it will work. I am guessing it is going to be difficult with a flat bottom boat compared to a non flat bottom. I will figure it out once I actually do this.

If this does work out, I will write an article about it for MSW and something for the NRG Journal.

 

In the end there will be three building methods that I would know off. POB, POF & Shell-First.

Marc

[amateur]

On a dutch forumsomeone has been experimenti g with this method. It took himsome time to get it right.

Planking always runsfair, however, getting your hullinto shape is not without problems.

Shell first was not used anymore in the lqte 17th century when ships like utrecht were build. By that time the shipwrights used drawings and plans to be able todeliver what was actually ordered.

 

Jan

[flying_dutchman2]

Played around with shell-first and it will take me longer to get a decent looking ship out of it or at least a few planks on the keel. I will intermittently work on it but first and foremost the Utrecht takes priority and will be built as a POB.

 

Glued the spacers which are 26mm wide to the frames.

 

Template I made so the frames are even with one another.

 

Home made large clamp. The 2 long square dowels in the top of the picture are templates of the keel. The spaces are for the frames.

 

Template of what the keel will look like and was used to keep the frames even.

 

All frames glued together and put on the keel template. Everything fits.

 

Another view but from the top.

 

As this is my first attempt of scratch I have made numerous templates to make sure that x, y, and z plane are aligned with each other. Next will be the bow which is either as a sanded and cared solid piece of basswood or planking like the replica.

I have been looking at many pictures of how the stern is built and do have an idea as how this will be. It is going to be fun.

Marc

[Piet]

Looking good Marc!  

 

Cheers,

[amateur]

The easiest way to plank te bow is using a couple of filler blocks to get the shape right, and planking that over.

 

Jan

[Richard Griffith]

Looking good Marc, keep at it.              Duff

[flying_dutchman2]

The easiest way to plank te bow is using a couple of filler blocks to get the shape right, and planking that over.

 

Jan

I thought of doing that. I glued 3 - 5" x 5" x 1/2" of basswood together and used the scroll saw to cut out the basic shape. Once my sander is delivered I can sand the angles.

Marc

[flying_dutchman2]

Just a thought:

With scratch building my jacht, there is not really a correct way of building a particular ship. I scour the NET, especially the Friesian museum that has all there plans of digitized and available. Also search the word "bouwtekeningen" (build drawings) and there is much of that as well.

Look through numerous books and pictures just to get an idea of what certain parts were built.

What I may do is go to several book merchants in Holland and order a book or two on the subjects of jachts. (bol.com.nl; nautiek.nl and lanasta.com).

 

The original book of the Utrecht - Ab Hoving is really good. The one I have from Gil MaCardle is pretty good. I am just not building according to his method. There is one book E.v.Konijnenburg.Schip Building - available on archive.org and 2 german books; Die Niederlandische Jacht im 17.Jahrhundert and Smakken Kuffen Galioten-1897 (free) that have helped me a lot.

 

Then one has to be very creative to come up with methods and patterns, etc to put it all together. Compared to English or French ships I find (but I could be wrong) that there isn't much technical reference on early Dutch ships, but, it is getting better.

 

In the 80's I built a tjalk from a drawing and it was completely wrong. I put 200 years of methods in one little boat. I was so off, I laughed and learned a lot. I put a 1/2 lb weight in the hull and let it sail towards the middle of the local township lake. Top heavy like the Wasa. One little breeze and sank.

 

Thanks for reading.

Marc

[amateur]

Your discovery that there isn't much is correct. Not only in recent literature, but also inthe contemporenous literature there is fairly little.

That's a result of the fact that there wasn't a standardied building system in the netherlands. Building used to be very much driven by learni g fromfather to son.

 

With respect tothe stuff at the frisian museum, you have to be aware: part of their collection is from local builders, but part of it also comes from amateurbuilders like you and me. There are actually models in their collection straight from the billing boats catalogue.... So, there is some pretty coolstuff over there, but also some less authentic material.

Btw do you already know the maritiemdigitaal.nl site?

 

Jan

[flying_dutchman2]

Finished all the frames and working on the bow and stern. I tend to overthink different ways on how to built different items. For instance - the bow - I make numerous templates and come up with many creative ideas on how this item should be built. I make it from balsa and basswood, then dry fit and if it isn't right I start all over again. I then resort back to the first idea.

 

I also get stuck on a particular measurement. In Emke's drawings the distance from frame 6.5 to the stern is different on 2 plans by 2 mm. I contemplate too much. I want it all exact but then when you think about it, 'nothing is exact'. Not in those days and not now. :-)

 

Used dark cherry to simulate oak. I am pretty happy about these pieces as they turned out well.

 

Different view and not sanded yet.

 

Template of the stern. The blue lines are for the framing of the stern.

 

 

Template of the lower part of the stern. To check distance and how it will be positioned.

 

 

Different templatesw and there are many more of these.

[amateur]

The middle piece on top of the rudder sits too high.

There is a beam on which the deck is resting, just above the tiller. That one runs over the full width of the ship.

The same at the top end: there is a beam over the full width for the top-deck. There is, as far as I know no additional framing in the stern.

 

Jan

Edited January 23, 2015 by amateur

[flying_dutchman2]

The middle piece on top of the rudder sits too high.

This would be the long skinny piece of it? I did copy it from the plan.

 

There is a beam on which the deck is resting, just above the tiller. That one runs over the full width of the ship.

The same at the top end: there is a beam over the full width for the top-deck.

I've seen that in the drawing from Emke and Macardle.

 

There is, as far as I know no additional framing in the stern. 

Jan

I should have explained this better. The blue lines on template of the stern are going to be small flat pieces of wood to make a frame.

 

Thanks for the suggestion.

Marc

Edited January 23, 2015 by Marcus Botanicus

[*Hans*]

Nice build Marc! I know it's still a long way ahaead, but how are you going to make the ornaments?

[flying_dutchman2]

Nice build Marc! I know it's still a long way ahaead, but how are you going to make the ornaments?

Hans;

I have 2 options.

1 - I carve them myself - never carved before.

2 - Chuck (sys admin) has the master molds from the model that Macardel did. He will make them for me and I purchase them at a reasonable price.

 

I like option 1 as this is a completely new area of model ship building and it would be a challenge.

Any tips, suggestions on carving is always appreciated.

Marc

[*Hans*]

I must say carving was quite a challenge for me as well - and I didn't come far because my son introduced greenstuff to me. So instead of carving I started claying, and this went very well in fact.

[flying_dutchman2]

I must say carving was quite a challenge for me as well - and I didn't come far because my son introduced greenstuff to me. So instead of carving I started claying, and this went very well in fact.

Hans,

Thanks for the suggestion.

There is something called Sculpy and there is some other material. Will research this more and decide what to do. But probably do it myself.

Marc