Building a Cutter

[MThomas]

"!"
... I just typed it in, but nothing happened but a picture of a mug of beer. Dammit! Guess I'll need to go to the store and fetch my beer the old-fashioned way!

 

[MThomas]

I've been away for a while and just checking in.
Allan, do you have any more posts of your cutter build? Maybe I missed them. I've been playing with airplanes all summer.

 

[AllanKP69]

Sorry but no more pics. The last pics I took before making a stand and boxing it up to ship are above.
Allan

 

[serikoff]

To help anyone building such a cutter, here's the layout of the floorboards and gratings. It's taken from Diana's anatomy, but they all had this layout. It's a shame it's rarely specified anywhere, so you have to guess. I'll be building the same one for my Alert in the future.

 

[AllanKP69]

but they all had this layout.

I have not seen footwaling like David White shows in his drawing on any contemporary drawings or models. Do you know of any contemporary sources that show footwaling done this way?
Thanks Serikoff!
Allan

 

[serikoff]

but they all had this layout.

I have not seen footwaling like David White shows in his drawing on any contemporary drawings or models. Do you know of any contemporary sources that show footwaling done this way?
Thanks Serikoff!
Allan

You're right, it's not the same everywhere... in fact, it's very different everywhere. I've reviewed all the anatomies I have (and there are many) and here are the options. And it's up to each individual to choose which one to use (depending on the level of detail in the specific drawings).









When I get around to building boats for Alert, I'll examine this issue in detail, because there's a major error in the Alert anatomy for the second boat. There are quite a few errors, but this one is particularly jarring. In short, an 18-foot cutter is realistic, but a 16-foot longboat is simply a scaled-down version of a larger boat, or even a larger one. Since it's simply impossible for a small boat to have eight benches, it's simply an mistake.

 

[pugwash]

Having the complete set of the 'Anatomy' series of books I collated all the small boat drawings into a smart little 'book'; each of the drawings were re-sized to a common 1:48 scale.

Can't believe the publishers haven't done the same, it seems such a simple but useful thing to do.

 

[AllanKP69]

Thanks Serikoff for posting these drawings. They are very well done but I was actually hoping for contemporary plans rather than modern day plans like in the AOTS series of books which are not always realistic as you point out. I would hope the drawings in these books are based on contemporary plans, but as you point out, they cannot be trusted without proper research to be sure. Another example of a gross error is the pinnace drawing in the AOTS book on the Pandora. They show the pinnace with a pair of tholes for every other thwart so half the thwarts are without any tholes at all so would have no rowers on those. Pinnaces were commonly, if not always, single banked and launches and long boats were usually double banked if the breadth was sufficient for two rowers on a thwart. Their drawing is neither single banked nor double banked. This mistake is not uncommon and is likely not knowing how to read contemporary drawings which sometimes show only one side in a cutaway view. This same mistake is found on many of the boat kits from Vanguard Models so the book mistake is not a lone case. Thanks again.

Allan

 

[Namabiiru]

I’m just guessing here, but it seems like small boats possibly were not built to a specified contract, like the ship was, but rather the details were left to the expertise of the boatwright at whatever small boats possibly were shop was available at the time and place. Thus, I think it would be likely there was a lot of variety amongst the thousands of ships boats across the fleet. Am I wrong in that?

 

[pugwash]

I’m just guessing here, but it seems like small boats possibly were not built to a specified contract, like the ship was, but rather the details were left to the expertise of the boatwright at whatever small boats possibly were shop was available at the time and place. Thus, I think it would be likely there was a lot of variety amongst the thousands of ships boats across the fleet. Am I wrong in that?

That hit the nail on the head! Standardization of ships boat design came very late in the game.