Bluenose by 7Provinces – Billing Boats – 1:75 - first wooden ship build

[7 Provinces]

The fish hatches. The kit’s hatches are square 30x30 mm with the hatch itself slightly smaller than the lid. Overall height: 6mm.

 

 

 

Using Matija’s plans and converting to scale 1/64 (3/4 of 1/48) which I assume is about right, I come to hatch sizes of 40x29 mm (main deck) and 35x24 mm (quarterdeck), 5 mm high. From the old photos (there is only one from the 1940’s showing a fish hatch) I am not sure that these sizes are accurate, but it’s the best I have to go on. According to Howard Chapelle the coaming of the hatches was 19”-24” high. From the photo I would guess this to be a bit on the high side for the Bluenose. My guess would be 30-40 cm, which translates roughly to 6 mm. above deck. So I took 7mm strips for the coaming with the intention to sink them into the deck (0.7mm) and go with that.

According to Chapelle the covers were seated in rabbets cut on the inside of the coamings. I am going to simulate this by gluing a block of balsa into the coamings and let the covers rest on this. Coamings were natural wood (weathered = dark like the deck), the covers were made of planks painted white on a frame. Unfortunately I have not found a photograph on which this can be verified for the Bluenose.

 

Two pictures of the basic fish hatch (coamings with the balsa, but without the covers) I made compared to the real one on the Bluenose (the man is standing in front of it):

 

 

 

Picture of one of the fish hatches being constructed. It is painted with a mix of “chocolate brown” and “mahogany varnish” and here I test-fitted the strips of which I make the covers:

 

 

Now on to creating the covers, painting everything and doing the metal work. I am a little bit reluctant to start on the metal work (hinges, etc.) since I have no experience with this whatsoever. I am eager to start, but I don’t want to rush it into 15 minutes of free time..

[schnu]

Nice to see that you are working on your ship again. The blackening solution looks amazing. I will buy it for my next build. You are right, rushing is never good. But I am sure that it will turn out great, like the rest of your build.

[7 Provinces]

Thanks Jean-Luc!

 

 

Yesterday I’ve been having a go at the ringbolts and the hatch cover bars for the fish hatches. I found out that where it is fairly easy to make ringbolts from wire (I used 0.4 and 0.6 mm), it is not so easy to cut a straight strip of brass sheet (for the hatch cover bar; I use 0.2 mm sheet). Somehow the snips (shears) displace the material to the side, causing it to bend in the lateral direction which is problematic since it is not easy to bend back. In addition, the snips leaves marks on the metal from the fine profile on the blade (for grip on the metal). This is unfortunate since it seemed to be the easiest way to cut sheet metal: make a score line along a ruler with a knife and then cut along the score with snips. Next I will try to cut all the way through the metal with the knife. The alternative, using a Dremel with a cutting disc just seems not precise enough and wasting a lot of material (when you cut a 1.5 mm wide strip).

 

Picture of the ringbolts:

 

 

 

Picture of the hatch cover bar blank:

 

 

 

In the picture you see that the sheet strip bent away from the cutting line (below) and that the cutting line is rough. It'll be easier to try to cut the metal with a knife, it's only 0.2 mm. brass after all. Other ideas are welcome of course 

[smileyjon]

The Billings kits are very poor (sadly) compared with other makes.  I had problems with this Billings 40 years ago and their issues are still the same.  They just haven't improved at all in all that time . .  although this is somewhat reflected in the price.

 

However this is looking like a stunning bit of work with attention to details.  I hope you continue with it and look forward to seeing it grow.

 

I am almost through building Bluenose by Model Shipways and have a little on this site but a full workup with details and plan extracts on Model Boat Mayhem if that helps

 

In the meantime . . well done.

 

Jon

[7 Provinces]

Hi Jon, 

 

Thanks for the comments. As written in the beginning of my log, I try to do what is within reasonable effort to "enhance" the model. I'll readily admit that the term "reasonable" is very stretchy and subject to my mood and inquisitiveness 

When buying this kit in 1994 I must admit that I did not think it was cheap, even compared to others, and I think the kit is at this time more expensive than the Model Shipways kit. Explain it who can 

I have no experience with other BB kits but I think next time I will try my luck with another brand or build from scratch alltogether. I would love to finally finish the fish hatches and then the deck and the hull... but unfortunately it is hard to find the time..

 

I did try to find you on Model Boat Mayhem but I did not find you, or your project. Is it the .co.uk site?

[7 Provinces]

Hi there, here’s what happened since May. 

It is only very marginal progress but I am posting it anyway, let’s say to keep the momentum

 

Glued the now painted hatches and hatch covers together. Made some test ringbolts in different sizes from brass wire with different diameters. When trying to create the ringbolts like illustrated in Chapelle more or less exactly to scale, they seem too small and the wire too thin. It seems to me that making the ringbolts a bit bigger looks better and adds something to the model even when it is not realism.

Here’s a picture of some tests. In the end I went with something like the one on the top (left top when looking straight at it). I liked the thicker, bottom ones but I did not want to overdo it. The one on the top is already too big as it is.

 

 

 

Also created the hatch cover bars. Cut the brass sheet with a hobby knife which went well for the brass strips but not so well for the knife

 

Then made the hinges. Since the hinge is wrapped around a wire which is thinner than my smallest pliers I had to wrap the strips around the wire directly. For this, I cut an incision with a Dremel cutting disc, then soldered the hinge to the brass wire and bent it around it.

 

 

 

 

After cutting the wire and sanding, the product looked like this:

 

 

 

For the other part of the hinge I used the same strip but cut away the sides and left the middle, then bent it into shape and “hung” it from the wire like this:

 

 

 

Then I cut the slots into the strips where the wire loops are going to come through.

On the picture below the parts I was going to blacken. Here you can see the cover bars with the hinges and next to it the other parts of the bar which are hooking into the hinge and hanging down the side of the hatch. The rest is wire loops and ringbolts.

 

 

 

In the meanwhile I have also blackened the parts (imagine the progress  ) but not yet assembled the fish hatches to their final state.

Hopefully there will be more soon…

[bhermann]

Jan-Willem

 

Nice job on the ring bolts.  I suspect your issue with the top left sample is the lack of variation in the thickness of the eye-bolt and the ring wire.  I like the diameter of the ring in that sample, but you might like it better if you were able to use a thinner wire for the eye-bolt.  The relative size of the eye and ring somehow 'feels' right to me in that sample.

 

The hinges look very nice as well.  Keep up the fine work!

 

Bob

[7 Provinces]

Bob, thanks for your comments and you are 100% correct. Actually the wire is 0.4 mm in that sample. I think this is ok for the eye-bolt (even when it is too thick for the scale) but I would prefer the ring just a tad thicker. The next thicker wire that I have (and which is easy to obtain where I live) is 0.6 mm. (the two samples on the bottom). I like the contrast but it is definitely too thick. Perhaps I should make another effort to look for 0.5 mm. brass wire (I need to be able to blacken it).

[popeye the sailor]

very nice looking build you have going .......you've added in some very nice detail      as I see,  you have the older kit........it wasn't laser cut.   brings back memories from when I did my first build,  the Nordkap    do you have any pictures of the hull frame being assembled?

[7 Provinces]

Thanks Popeye!

Unfortunately no. . 

I started to take pictures when I restarted the build and joined MSW. Without the build log I would not have thought of taking pictures.

Plus I did not have a digital camera back in 1994 

Edited September 23, 2015 by 7 Provinces

[mrcc]

Hi Jan-Willem,

 

I love the extra detail you are doing... you are certainly a great craftsman!

[7 Provinces]

Thanks Julian!

I see this ship as a kind of a testbed to see what is possible and what not.

Most of my mess-ups happen because (or when) I try to speed things up. So everytime things start to get difficult or when I see a mistake starting to happen I force myself to slow down (even more). Leaves me with some nice results here and there and the wish to speed up the build  . It never is perfect...

[7 Provinces]

Thanks everyone for all the likes!

Yesterday I finally found some time to assemble the fish hatches. I blackened the brass parts from the last post (sticking to the 0.4 mm brass wire for the ringbolts) already weeks ago. I did not even rinse them at the time but they looked ok so I treated them with some oil to get the satin finish of used parts. Then I assembled the parts carefully, only using miniscule amounts of CA where absolutely necessary. This was basically where I stuck the wire into the holes I drilled. I started out with 0.4 mm holes for the 0.4 mm brass but found out that I needed too much force to stick the wires in and I was afraid to damage (or un-blacken) them.

So I drilled 0.5 mm holes after which I needed some tiny amounts of glue to make sure they stuck. The bars have not been glued down but are held down by the wire loops.

 

Here are the results:

 

[popeye the sailor]

they look really good Jan-willem...........nice hardware 

[Philthy]

After you took the time to view and compliment my build, I wanted to return the favor and suddenly realized the timeline for this epic Bluenose journey! I thought I had it rough trying to remember what I did on a build I started 3 years ago let alone 2 decades! I am happy and surprised she was able to survive in such good shape. I have sadly sacrificed or buried in a trunk a number of old kits that didn't survive my many moves. I can't help to get a feeling of similarities with our two build logs albeit the detail in yours is leaps and bounds above mine We are both novices working with kits that are a little on the questionable side however, stubbornness and creativity take over to improve the look of the ship. 

 

Here is something you might want to try out in future builds that worked well for my Bon Retour decking. After staining the decks prior to glueing them down I used a felt tip permeant marker to ink ONE edge of the plank to mimic caulking between the planks. By inking only one side the effect is subtle enough to notice without overpowering the rest of the model. I have seen this effect used with pencil for a more subtle look. Now don't quote me for its accuracy but I feel it looks pretty good. After reading about your tree nail experiment I am thinking about trying the same effect on my humble fishing boat. Im at the part now of worrying about trying something out and really screwing up!  . I look forward to seeing your progress Also on youtube there is a video build log some guy made for the model shipways kit. It might help out in seeing how he tackles the few problems he faced with his bluenose build. 

 

Cheers!

Phil

[mikegerber]

Good morning Jan-Willem

 

I just stumbled upon your log and if you allow, I'll grab a seat in your shipyard - it is a interesting job you are doing here!

Looking forward to more logs ...

 

All the best,

Mike

[7 Provinces]

Thanks guys for the great feedback!

 

@Philty: I started my Bluenose 867 km. from where I am now  . Her in Europe that means there's a country in between (Germany). I moved 8 times since and hope to move for the last time in less than a year from now. I also hope to have a bit more time after moving 

 

@Mike: welcome, you'll need patience here  as you may have noticed I give my paints and glues a lot of time to cure 

[7 Provinces]

Unfortunately due to other obligations I have not been able to work on my project for exactly half a year now (just realized this while writing this entry in the log). This has become a growing discomfort and now I have found a way to make some time and do a little work again. Progress is small, as always, but these days I got to take what I can get

 

Since a long time already I want to finish the deck. I made a plan for this. It involves several steps to be carried out in a certain order (which I changed a few times over the years) to make sure the latter step has minimal chance of damaging something produced in a former step. Right. Anyway, it means that to be able to finish the deck (like varnish it or alike as the last step) I would have to do the trenailing and cut the overlong planks into shorter ones. but before I can do that in a sensible way I need to know which space is going to be occupied by structures like the cabin and the fish hatches. Hence I have been working on that since about a year. After having done a test with the Billing Boats cabin and having a look at the 1961 John R. Stevens plans I decided to have a go at this first. Not necessarily to finish it right now but to at least make the outlines so I can cut it out of the deck.

I took the measures from the plan and had a look at the pictures I have of the real thing (plan and pictures show some differences) and decided to go with the plan (but not too accurate) where the plan seems ok or where I do not have any pictures and eyeball it from the pictures where I notice a difference to the plans.

On the left the cabin walls as from the plan and on the right the Billing Boats version (a bit  shorter and significantly wider). Below that on the left my own skylight and on the right the original Billing Boats version.

 

[7 Provinces]

… and this is what I build the cabin etc. for…

Not the nicest thing to do, cutting up a perfectly fine deck..

While doing this I found out that the Billing Boats cabin, hatches, etc. not only have different shapes but also different locations. A feat which I do not really appreciate so much since I did some test cuts in the middle of where the cabin was going to be and they’re not visible in front of the cabin  Not to mention the loose planks (I didn't glue them where the cabin and the hatches were goin to be (22 years ago)...

Oh well..

 

Edited March 29, 2016 by 7 Provinces

[7 Provinces]

There’s the new cabin with the compass. All still in a premature state. Next to it the skylight, lying on the side because of the stick I glued underneath to hold it while painting.

 

 

So with the cabin outlined and the fish hatches done I have the main shapes I need when cutting the planks to length (that is, in retrospect cutting the already laid deck planks). The front hatch and forecastle are represented by spare blocks which seem to fit the plan.

As you see from the picture below, I found out at this point that the foremast according to the Billing Boats plans is about 15 mm. further towards the stern than on the 1961 plan (and probably than on the Model Shipways plans but I cannot check this since I don’t have these) and so the hole that I already drilled according to my Billing Boats plan is right underneath the forecastle. Well, what can I say? It fits the overall picture even when it does not cease to be a bit disappointing every time this happens. Anyway, it could have been worse. At least this hole is covered up by the forecastle. 

 

[bhermann]

Jan-Willem

 

I think your versions of the deck structures look much more realistic than the ones provided by Billings, and are definitely worth the effort.  If you ever want measurements from the Model Shipways plans, let me know and I'll be happy to take some for you.  You'll have to convert them from 1:64 to 1:75 scale.

 

About the long time between sessions, I guess that is the price we pay for having a life in addition to a hobby.  It has been over a year since I have been able to do any work on my Bluenose build, so I understand your frustration.  All I can say is work on it when you can, but don't fret about it when you can't.  The project will be there when you have time to spend on it.

 

Keep up the good work and please share your progress as time permits.

 

Bob

[7 Provinces]

Thanks Bob, that's very kind. I may come back to you about some details later on. I am not so sure what scale my model is but it is definitely not 1:75. That is only the number on the box but a newer edition shows 1:65 which is closer. I calcualted it is around 1:57 but since the relative sizes of width, height and length are not in proportion I guess no-one can tell. For all I know the model is based on "any" fishing schooner in scale 1/64 and some "bluenose" detail was added (but not too much). In fact, there is a striking lack of resemblence such that one might call it the "anonymous schooner".  Still it is fun to build 

 

Yes I know, models can be patient   Still, if you don't take care of yourself then how to take care of others? One must find a balance to stay fit and to me, modelling is a great decellerator. The trick is to model enough to gain energy for the family and the job and not so much that you lose track of everything else.. 

[popeye the sailor]

good to see your back at the table Jan........don't take the frequency of the build to heart.....no one said these models we build should be done in a day.   a lot of folks don't have the time to devote to their builds......it's important to take care of the world around you.  this is ,  after all,  a hobby     I can't wait to start mine......I have all three hull frames assembled.   1:64 scale sounds about right for them,  since I didn't take out the extra 10 mm from the length of the hull.     I haven't planked anything......since your finding so many mistakes in the plans....I'm glad I haven't.  take your time my friend.....it will pay you back ten-fold when you gaze at the finished ship  

[mrcc]

Hi Jan-Willem,

 

I love your methodical approach... all in the goal of attaining historical accuracy!

I think it is worth the work and effort.

 

With regards to all the builds and kits on this forum, I think only the Model Shipways kit would get an "A" grade in that respect.

 

Take care!

Edited April 7, 2016 by mrcc

[7 Provinces]

After spending some time this morning to clean and fire up my old Gaggia Coffee Classic espresso machine, opening a pack of the “always great” Lavazza Qualità Oro coffee and making a nice espresso, I decided it is time to work a bit on my model and write an update. By now you probably have guessed that the admiral and the little sailors are not at home this morning

A few days ago I made the decision to do the trenails on my version of the Bluenose after all. They’re not really all that visible and in fact it is so much work that I almost regret my decision already, but I thought “why not, while you’re at it”. By now I have drawn with a pencil on the deck where the planks will be separated and where I will drill the holes for the trenails. I spent a considerable amount of time on that and by now I have only done the aft deck. That’s what I meant with almost regretting the decision, but hey, now that I started it I am going to finish it.

On the other hand I am going to continue on the cabin. I have noticed 2 peculiarities which are boggling my mind for quite some time now:

1. On the plans (John R. Stevens, 1961) there is a chimney on the cabin. I have also seen this appear in several builds. I would love to build this chimney, but with the best of intentions I cannot find any hint of it on any of the NSA pictures. These pictures range from the building of the Bluenose until she was sold just before WW2. I have checked the pictures several times. Any hints are appreciated!
2. On the plans (any plans that I have seen), the cabin has 4 portholes. Oddly enough I can only find pictures of the port side of the cabin. There must be a dozen or so but only port side .  Anyway, the pictures show only one porthole, at least on port side this is. So I am inclined to make three, one on port and 2 on starboard side. In fact I prepared 3, but will not attach them until the cabin is almost finished. Any hints on this topic are also appreciated!

 

I will post some pictures later on.

[7 Provinces]

So here are two pictures from today, a picture of the aft deck with the pencil markings:

 

 

And here is one of the 3 portholes I made out of brass sheet. Basically I drilled 3 holes, clipped then out (roughly) and sanded them into shape (about round). Then I hammered a few dents in them to represent (on the flip side) the bolts.

 

[7 Provinces]

The last couple of weeks I spent the little time I got (with some nice weather, in the garden, kids playing in the sand) on drilling holes in the deck and cutting the planks apart so that they look to have been shorter all along.

I hope to be able to finish the deck anytime soon (like before Christmas ;-) ) so that I can finally leave that behind me and start on the hull…

 

 

[twintrow]

Jan-Willem if you put a couple drops of glue/water 50/50 mixture on the deck, rub around with you finger til nearly dry then sand lightly the dust generated will be moistened and fill the holes creating faux treenails.

Just a suggestion.

Tom

[7 Provinces]

Very good suggestion (really appreciate the idea) which I am very afraid to try 

I see that this would save a lot of time as compared to my way of working used during my tests. Which was to cut 0.5 mm strips from the same 0.7 mm mahogany of which the deck is made (on itself a challenge since the wood splits in all directions but straight) and try to fiddle these into the 0.6 mm holes I drilled (no glue) follwowed by cutting to length and sanding. The good thing of that method: after oiling the deck they really stand out nicely. The downsides: after varnishing they are pretty darn hard to spot (but definitely there) and it takes like forever and a half.

 

So I think it's back to the testing bench to test your method because I reckon that investing an hour here can save five or more there. 

I hope the result will look good as well...

 

My main concern however is that I would screw up the deck with the glue. I know it will be sanded afterwards but I already sanded a lot (to get the deck even, see previous posts) and it is wearing thin in places 

So basically I am a bit afraid of either have glue residue which might not look good or prevent me from putting down a nice layer of varnish, or, alternatively sanding the whole deck away in places 

 

One question before I start testing: you would be using white wood glue for this I guess?

 

Thanks!

[twintrow]

Sure white glue.  You will only sand it a little to create the dust.  Shouldn't affect anything else. Good luck be sure and include some photos of the tests.

Tom