Several months a close friend, who owns several ship yards, showed me some pictures of a cabin cruiser he had under construction based on a design by Devlin Boat ( the North Haven 26):
All of my previous models have been sailing ships no more recent than the 1840's, but I decided to see if indeed you can teach an old dog new tricks by building a model of this vessel.
The Devlin Boat web site (www.devlinboat.com) offers downloadable study plans for their many boat designs at a price of $1-$2. The information in the plans for the North Haven 26, one sheet of which is shown below, were adequate for making a scratch model in combination with additional details of the real boat obtained from it's photos in the yard.
The vessel is 26' long and I built my model at a scale of 1/24 by the plank on bulkhead method. The hull was easy to make and a simple to plank, but figuring out how to do the cabin structures presented a bit of a challenge for this first time builder of a cabin cruiser. All construction was with 1/32” plywood with double thickness used when needed for structural support. I would have been unable to make a creditable outboard motor but fortunately a web search turned up a suitable motor in 1/24 scale sold by Three Inches Under (https://www.threeinchesunder.com/). Painting was done with spray paint purchased at the hardware store. Painting is not my forte, and my masking job could have been better to produce sharper lines, but the overall result looked OK.
Photos of the finished model are shown below. It will be getting a plexiglas dust cover. You can note in the first photo some holes drilled along the edge of the base. I have found that models give off glue and paint fumes for a long time after they are built, and if put it a case it is worthwhile to provide venting to prevent clouding of the inside of the case over time.
All of my previous models have been sailing ships no more recent than the 1840's, but I decided to see if indeed you can teach an old dog new tricks by building a model of this vessel.
The Devlin Boat web site (www.devlinboat.com) offers downloadable study plans for their many boat designs at a price of $1-$2. The information in the plans for the North Haven 26, one sheet of which is shown below, were adequate for making a scratch model in combination with additional details of the real boat obtained from it's photos in the yard.
The vessel is 26' long and I built my model at a scale of 1/24 by the plank on bulkhead method. The hull was easy to make and a simple to plank, but figuring out how to do the cabin structures presented a bit of a challenge for this first time builder of a cabin cruiser. All construction was with 1/32” plywood with double thickness used when needed for structural support. I would have been unable to make a creditable outboard motor but fortunately a web search turned up a suitable motor in 1/24 scale sold by Three Inches Under (https://www.threeinchesunder.com/). Painting was done with spray paint purchased at the hardware store. Painting is not my forte, and my masking job could have been better to produce sharper lines, but the overall result looked OK.
Photos of the finished model are shown below. It will be getting a plexiglas dust cover. You can note in the first photo some holes drilled along the edge of the base. I have found that models give off glue and paint fumes for a long time after they are built, and if put it a case it is worthwhile to provide venting to prevent clouding of the inside of the case over time.