Hallo @DomCeeI will not be starting my next build for a while but I thought I would give it a “heads up” now that I have the kit in the shipyard.
Part 1 - Start of a Long Voyage
Choice of Kit - an Odd (or Familiar) Story?
The windjammers/clippers from the mid to late 19th century have always fascinated me for their sleek hull lines and sheer amount of sail. The Cutty Sark is a classic model to build of this type and there are a number of kits to choose from. I looked at some reviews and builds of Cutty Sark kits on the SOS forums and other web sites. Robertd’s recent build of the Sergal/Mantua kit < R'Ds CS > came out very nicely. I was intending to buy that kit later this year but I spotted an estate clearance auction listing for an “old” model boat kit of the Cutty Sark. It turned out to be Billing Boats BB564 complete with the separate fittings kit that had been purchased as a “project” but never started. I left a silly low commission bid and to my surprise won the auction. When I received it I found that it was still in its original shipping box and wrapping paper and had only been opened for inspection. The kit itself is in near mint condition, just some slight damage to the box where the sealing tape had been. The fittings box ( that you had to purchase separately back then) was unopened.
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Judging from the postage labels the kit was bought in the mid 80’s and has spent the past 37+ years languishing at the back of a cupboard (it makes me wonder just how many model kits have been bought with good intentions but are now just collecting dust?).
I think that it is time for this Cutty Sark to see the light of day and spread her sails (probably not the Stuns’ls!).
Gathering My Thoughts on a Build Plan
Although it is not my first choice of kit it will be a good challenge (but I may also regret this one). It will also be the biggest model I have attempted. The completed model is 1.1m (43”) long and the desk I use for my hobby work is 1.4m wide so I am going to struggle (I also have no idea where I will put it when it’s done!). I am also sure that the rigging will test my patience (and my eyesight!) to the limit but that stage is a long way off into the future for now. I don’t have a lot of space to display my models so it is my intention to take my time over this build, add extra detail and make more parts from scratch. I think I will also need plenty of advice on building this one!
The kit is definitely “vintage” (no laser cut parts). I know that Billing kits from this time were not of the best quality but I will be using this as a base kit for the model build so I’m quite OK with the out-of-the-box quality issues from the day. All of the frames are jig cut and some of the ply parts are die-cut. Other detailing parts are just printed onto ply sheets and need to be cut out (I will probably just use them as templates and make new parts from solid wood). The decorative mouldings and service boats are plastic as are the rigging blocks and deadeyes. The rear transom decoration is a decal. The instructions are the usual basic ones from BB with four plan drawings of layout, sails, pins and rigging.
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Because I paid very little for the kit I will upgrade it as I go through the build by replacing all of the plastic parts with wood/brass and making new parts where I think the model will benefit.
I have already purchased a set of photo-etched decor parts and a full set of walnut CNC rigging blocks from HisModel. The rigging blocks came in two sets, one for the standing rigging (224 pieces) and one for the running rigging (535 pieces). The blocks are of the correct type and size for this model (759 blocks to rig is however very intimidating!).
I will replace the plastic service boats with wooden ones of the correct type and scale. If anyone knows where I can find some suitable 1:75 kit replacements (or some scale plans so that I could make them myself) that would be great, please let me know through the forum.
I will also replace the rigging thread with some decent rope when I reach that point (I think I will purchase rather than try to make my own).
The BB kit has no hull plates included and the lower hull is suggested to be painted (I think even the latest version of this kit does not offer plates as an option). I would like to sheath the hull because the real ship was sheathed and I will consider options for that upgrade when I reach that point.
To help with the build and rigging I have bought a set of G.F. Campbell’s plans (General Layout, Rigging and Sail Plan) from the Royal Museums Greenwich. I also found Olha’s book review “Cutty Sark, The Ship and the Model/Longridge. C Nepean'' on her YouTube Channel < CS ref book > and I was able to locate a good used copy of the book in the UK. I do not intend to go the “whole hog” on the model by super-detailing it, my intention is to improve it to a level that I am happy with (whatever that is?).
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I will take a long holiday soon and I have some home improvement projects to do when I return, so it will be a while before I can get started on the framing (probably late autumn). Now that the pandemic is over (I hope!) I have many other things to do, so I will have less time to spend on the ship hobby. I will mainly work on this model during the winter weather months and I will intersperse the work between projects. I am expecting that I will be working on this one for quite some time to come (?years?!) but I am in no hurry.
I will give an update once I have kicked-off the framing.
About 200 plates down, only another 1800+ to go!
Good afternoon. You have just convinced me never to do a copper plated hull ship….Great job though. Cheers GrantPart 13 A Lot of Brass Later! - The Monster Now Has Scales on it! - What was I Thinking?
Which is worse…. laying plates or tying rat-lines?
Answer = Plates!
My advice for fellow modellers considering sheathing their models in a similar way is just replace the word “hull” with “HELL” and you’ll be about right!
I made quite good progress at first and then it all became very messy! At the top of the sheathing the hull is fairly slab sided so laying the first strakes of plates was not too bad but, as soon as the hull started to curve, it became very difficult to keep a neat tiling pattern whilst maintaining a consistent overlap. As the curves increased further down the hull the problems became worse and worse. The only way was to continuously adjust the overlaps to compensate as necessary and use partial plates where needed. I thought I was really making a mess of it but I looked closely at my images of the CS hull and saw that they had done exactly the same thing - so there was a method to my madness!
Some of the plate spacings went awry at times but, over the whole hull, I decided it did not really matter so long as there was some offset to the plates so that it didn’t look too bad from a distance. The critical thing was to keep the plating strakes as parallel to the keel as possible. After I finished each strake, I used my waterline marker to check and adjust the next strake line and continued down the hull. Where the hull flattens out at the bottom the plates go from near vertical at the bow and stern to almost flat at the centre and it was very difficult to get a good line to plate to using my water-line marker so, I attached a scribe to my multi-arm DTI gauge stand and used that to mark the hull and, as a double check, I placed some masking tape along the line to make sure that it was correct. I really struggled where the plates meet the keel because I could not get them to fit neatly without leaving some small gaps. I did not want to use slivers of brass to fill the gaps so the only way I could do it was to cut each of the keel plates from foil sheet and trim each one to fit neatly.
I will give the plates a good clean and a light polish to remove any greasy fingerprints and coat them with a clear lacquer (matt or satin - I haven’t decided) because I do not want “super-shiny” brass.
I do not think I would use this method (EVER!) again if I were to sheath another model. It did become easier after I had put a few strakes of plates on the hull and the port side went a lot quicker (and I did a better job) than the starboard side but, never-the-less, it did take a lot of very tedious hours to finish. My initial estimate of 2000 plates was way off because I did not factor in how much area of each plate is lost because of the overlaps and wastage. In the end I used up all of the 50 m brass reel which was enough to make 2750 plates plus, I had to make the plates that fitted into the keel section from the brass sheet so it ended up around the 2900-3000 mark for the whole hull. Being able to cut the plates from the reel made life a “little” better, however, the whole process was very laborious and I could only complete a couple of strakes at a time before I lost the will to live and had to walk away and come back later. The bonding tape was probably the easiest way to attach the plates but you do have to accept that the tape does add some thickness which creates a step where the plates overlap - it’s not perfect but it does the job. However, plate + tape is <0.2mm so it is still less than the thickness of a veneer strip and on a hull that is over one metre long, it really doesn’t matter that much.
It may be possible to achieve a smoother finish on the hull by using some other types of adhesives (e.g. repositionable gel CA which takes about 60 seconds to bond) but I think that would be only for the really hard core modellers - it would allow the plates to lay slightly flatter, however, the prospect of sticking each plate on with any type of glue would challenge anybody and you would almost certainly end up with glue all over the surfaces.
If you took (a lot of ) your time you could trim every plate to butt up against the next but using the scale plate size would be a complete nightmare to even attempt to do so. You could probably do it with larger plates than scale (probably double or even triple size) if you weren’t bothered by the accuracy of the model.
Unfortunately, I did bump one of the bulwarks during the plating which was very annoying but, given how big and heavy the hull is now to move about, it was not unexpected. It would have been better to leave the false stanchions in place to give them some support until after the sheathing and then remove them. Fortunately it was not a major repair and the bulwarks will be reinforced when I fit the main rails.
Next up: Main decking/some painting/main rails
After lacquering the plates there are a few things that need to be done next but I need to give a bit of thought about the order of work or I will run into problems. I will sort out the covering for the main decking because that needs to be done before I can fix the main rails into place but that also necessitates painting the water channels and inner bulwarks first.
I'm trying to push on and get as much done on the hull as I can during March but, time in the shipyard is going to be limited as my spring projects are now starting to kick in and I am under orders to sort out the garden after a particularly wet and windy winter.
Hi Grant,Good afternoon. You have just convinced me never to do a copper plated hull ship….Great job though. Cheers Grant
Hi Mark,Rather you than me Dom. After purchasing my HMS Fly I soon learnt that her sister ship HMS Pegasus is built along very similar lines, with the standout exception of having to copper-plate the hull as well. I think I dodged a bullet there! 3000 plates? Unreal
You are back of your holiday and I am back on your build-log, Dom. I visited before but now went through it from te beginning. Besides the Amerigo Vespucci, the Cutty Sark is on my list. And yes I do love impressive riggings. But whether either of those two will ever come to my work table…….. Therefore I will follow it for now with great interest.Part 16 Fixing the Forecastle Deck, Main Rails and Margins
Back from a much needed holiday mountain hiking in Austria - very nice!
“I see no ships!”
Getting back to the model, the first job was to glue down the poop deck covering and the margin pieces for the stern and front edge trim.
The next job was fitting the bowsprit. There is an error that I noticed right at the start of the hull build (Billing = no surprise). The foredeck height is too low and the forecastle deck is too high by 2mm each but, the two errors combine so that bowsprit comes out of the Knights Head just below the forecastle deck level. On the ship there is a small section of the lower bowsprit that comes through the very front of the forecastle deck (see Part 7). Everything measured correctly to the plans so it is definitely a mistake by Billings. It is not really possible to correct for the error because raising the height of the bowsprit would create a large gap between it and the beak and changing the angle would make it uneven. It's not a big thing because the very front of the forecastle deck will eventually be buried under a lot of rigging hanks! With the bowsprit fitted I glued the forecastle deck and the margin planks in place and added the half-round trim to the front of the deck.
Finally, I fixed the main rails in place. I allowed a 2mm overhang on the outside of the hull for the main rails and the fore and aft margin planks. They form the continuous upper strake that goes around the ship (the upper bulwark and top rail are fitted onto the main rail as can be seen in the image).
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I pinned the rails in places using some 0.5mm brass wire to make sure they stayed in the correct position while the glue set and clamped a straight edge across the beam in order to keep the two rails flat.
Next: I will finish off the rudder, make some new rudder irons and fit them to the model. There are some hatchways to build so that I can check the positions of everything on the deck and I will make up the upper bulwarks, top rails and cats. There is no particular order needed for these so I will post an update when I have done a bit more.
Hi Peter,You are back of your holiday and I am back on your build-log, Dom. I visited before but now went through it from te beginning. Besides the Amerigo Vespucci, the Cutty Sark is on my list. And yes I do love impressive riggings. But whether either of those two will ever come to my work table…….. Therefore I will follow it for now with great interest.
Regards, Peter