Mary Ann by Billing Boats 472 - Build log

[Roycv]

Hello, very nicely built. I have two working Mary Anns but not with your excellent cabin detail. The motor you have chosen is good for the job and although the 2 blade prop is correct I fitted a small 30mm 3 bladed one. I used Marx Monoperm supers (because I have several) for my boats but current consumption is less than an amp. I used very cheap esc's from AliExpress at £2 each they may have gone up in price now but that will need to have the small red 2 lead connectors fitted which are very cheap. They work very well without any failures, there is a tiny switch on the esc that switches the breaking as for cars ,on and off.

The model only needs a 9 gram servo fitted for the rudder as there is not much power needed. I too have made brass rudders almost identical to yours as they do look much better. I have a small area for getting at the top of the rudder post under the grating, which always seems to stay in place.

I have some old wartime photos of the fishing boats in a WW2 Naval Intelligence book documenting all fishing in the North Sea from every country involved together with the seasons for catching different fish species.

I did note that one fishing boat similar to Mary Ann had the trawl winch at right angles to the placement in the kit plans. You said you have some experience on the fishing boats is that something you can tell us about? It would seem more logical.
I do have a 3 man crew on each model which rather brings them to life. Thank you for the information for the requirement for the sails.

I look forward to seeing the finished model.

Roy

 

[pete_5]

Hello Roy,
Thanks for stopping by for a look at what I've been doing. It's always interesting to hear from fellow builders who have tackled the same boat. I've thought that a three man crew would be about right...I have a few potential crew members underway on my bench at the moment, but I haven't yet decided who will make it through the selection process for inclusion in the maiden crew.

But it wasn't me that had the real-life experience on these boats, that was another member of the name of El Capi, he sailed on them for a few years in his younger days and has good knowledge of their setup if you're after more info (he also has lots of photos). He did also mention that the winches varied between the boats...some mounted longitudinally and others perpendicular.

I've been letting other things get in the way of my building recently, but hopefully I'll have more to report on by the end of the week.

 

[Roycv]

Hello Roy,
Thanks for stopping by for a look at what I've been doing. It's always interesting to hear from fellow builders who have tackled the same boat. I've thought that a three man crew would be about right...I have a few potential crew members underway on my bench at the moment, but I haven't yet decided who will make it through the selection process for inclusion in the maiden crew.

But it wasn't me that had the real-life experience on these boats, that was another member of the name of El Capi, he sailed on them for a few years in his younger days and has good knowledge of their setup if you're after more info (he also has lots of photos). He did also mention that the winches varied between the boats...some mounted longitudinally and others perpendicular.

I've been letting other things get in the way of my building recently, but hopefully I'll have more to report on by the end of the week.

 

[Roycv]

Hello thanks for your response, I read through 5 pages and got lost in the threads. But your info on the winch placement was interesting. The Billing Mary Ann is the most attractive fishing boat and I just like looking at her. I found my second crew lurking in my garage.! It was a father anf two beefy sons who volunteered! I explained the pay was awful and there was no time off, but they said if I got them some heavy weather gear they would man the boat.

Billing do another fishing boat Cux 87 (I think) and the hull keel and frames are exactly the same with the same Billing sheet numbers. I have a third kit with just the frames assembled but I wanted a different boat and maybe look at the Nordern plans and copy that deck layout.
My kits are old and have the trawl gallows in brass.

I do recommend the cheap esc I use from AliExpress. They are the only ones I use these days.
My preference is for model yachts of which I have about 10. I have a Mantua Bruma kit unstarted, but I want to have the sails also functioning which is going to take some thinking about. I have been advising another modeller on the Model Boats Website on how to place a temporary keel in a Bruma without it being obvious when removed. The challenge is switching off the mixer to the twin motors and have separate control of the boat rudder while sailing. I think I have solved it but most starts can be improved on.

I am scratch building a Wild Duck scale yacht yacht at the moment but the next one will be an Artisania Latina Trotamores, (converted fishing boat), from a static to a working model. I am the despair of my family with over 40 model boats in the house all radio controlled.

Regards
Roy

 

[pete_5]

It’s been a frustrating few days
Well, I did ask for it last time…I shouldn’t have mentioned anything about ‘luck’. Anyway, I noticed one of the vertical rubbing rails at the stern end was starting to lift. These are only thin strips of wood, but there is a fair bend in the shape of the hull at that point and I obviously didn’t get sufficient bend ‘set’ into the strip before gluing it down. I thought it best to sort that out now before doing any further painting - that was about the only good thought I had in this little episode!



I decided to glue the end down with some thin CA, using its wicking ability to get back under the timber and then hold it down while it dried. The first problem encountered was that I should have used a fine syringe to apply the glue, but I used an extension nozzle on a new bottle of CA and, when turned upside down, the full bottle gave it enough momentum to inject way too much glue and that came out the other side and over the paintwork…dissolving the acrylic top coat as it went. Then I put a rubber band over top of the piece being glued (around the hull), to let it dry properly before sorting out the paint damage.

This brings me to problem number two…and it’s a bit embarrassing. I thought I’d put the hull back out in the sun for a bit while it dried off (just for a few minutes), and I then went off to do something else. And, you know that feeling you get when you remember something an hour or so later…yes, I’d left it baking in the sun and it was quite hot to touch when I bought it back in. This had allowed the rubber band to cut into the paint work quite badly. A frustrating morning overall…and I only had myself to blame. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos of this. Anyway, I’m now back to fixing things prior being able to finish the painting.

First, I removed the worst of both issues by rubbing them back with 600 grit wet & dry, but there were areas that needed a small amount of filler to bring the surface back to a consistent level. Now to problem number three…it turns out that automotive spray primers and putties are solvent rich and that can dissolve dry acrylic paint that is already on the surface…not to the point of wrinkling or peeling, but it does etch the acrylic out to the edges of the applied primer. In my case this was complicated by me using masking tape to try to limit the size of the area I was fixing. This resulted in the primer etching a square of fine lines at the tape edge.

Here (below) is one side after spraying and rubbing back the spray putty, and you can see both the remnants of the masking border, and also a line right around the edge of where the putty was re-sprayed to try and fill the line around the masked area. That wavy, dotted line is actually a line of small cavities in the surface where the solvent has etched the acrylic. At this point I felt this job is getting bigger rather than better!



The small blocks shown near the hull, above, are a couple of thin sanding boards I made up so that I can 600 wet & dry sand between the rubbing bands, they worked well when I got to that stage. The other thing that you can see in that photo is that the fourth band from the left of the photo is also starting to show signs of lifting at the end, probably due to the spray putty softening the paint and Weld-Bond glue below it. Remember the rhyme about the 'old lady who swallowed a fly'...

At this point I decided to re-glue all of the ends that showed even the slightest movement. I used a scalpel blade to carefully slice from the end for a few millimetres and then I used a very small 1ml syringe with a needle point to inject the smallest quantity of thin CA under the timber. This wicked in immediately and each was carefully held in place with a screwdriver blade until dry. The 1ml syringe worked very well, I filled it with a small amount of CA directly from the bottle and it was easily cleaned afterward with acetone…this is how I’ll probably use the thin CA in future.

Finally, I feel as though I’m starting to make progress again. Now the issue that I still have to sort out is filling all those small etched areas around where I had used the spray putty & primer. All of the fillers I have used thus far are not great for this task…the blue Sika 107 is too coarse and the Deluxe Lite does not stick or sand well in very fine applications. I did a bit of research and found another Deluxe product called Perfect Plastic Putty that gets good reviews. And this is close what I was after, it is water based and designed to go on painted surfaces (won’t damage acrylics), it’s very fine in structure, it's a single pack (no mixing), it dries quickly, and importantly it sands well to a hard polished finish for painting. The feathering at the edges is good, but not as good as you get from spray putty or multiple primer coats.

As you can see, below, even though the filled surface looked perfect before painting, once you get the finish coat back on and dry, you can still see remnants of the filled area. Those bright lights make it look worse than it seemed.



At this point I was getting a bit deflated by the whole thing…but I really don’t like giving up! I decided to put it aside for a week or so, and did something else so that I could come back to it with fresh hands.

My last attempt would be…

• sand back with 600 on a rigid board to make sure it was flat
• slightly over-fill a larger area with the new filler to make sure I was getting those nasty edges covered
• dry sand (the filler will dissolve otherwise) at 1000 grit and check it in bright sunlight…I want to get smoothly feathered edges
• re-paint just the local area
• when dry, wet sand the top coat to remove any remaining ‘edges’
• repeat the re-paint/sand process, causing the top coat to act as a fine filler that is repeatedly feathered with each sand and re-coat.

I'm not finished yet, it's had two coats and is looking much better, so I'll show the final product in the next post.

 

[Roycv]

Hello Pete, I have just realised you are 'down under'. Our son lives in Woy Woy, not that far away in ozzy terms. I shall be visiting again for the whole of February and first week in March in 2025. It is my annual visit and have been at least a dozen times already. He has a large model railway, but is full size for a sailing yacht.

I am 86 and reasonably active but wobble a bit now and again! Just had a cataract operation and the result has been incredible with clearness of vision and colours are so bright and defined it is like going back 40 years. The other one should be done before I travel as well.
The acrylic car paints in UK need to be sprayed with the finishing varnish to stabilise them as otherwise they remain soft.

Do you by chance read Model Boats magazine from the UK?

I find this web site is good but I am not really interested in the old ships of the line etc as I like working models. I have around 10 sail boats and yachts, with rather a lot of electric model boats. including a radio controlled clockwork model boat, scratch built before I was born.

This Mary Ann is my second one and has no number I am planning on rearranging the kit numbers for her and a new name. The other is a model of Lilla Dan, or at least she is built from those plans. As the hull is a plastic Graupner Elke fishing boat and the the full length over the bowsprit is 36 inches (900mm). They both have a working crew on board.
Regards
Roy

 

[pete_5]

Hello Pete, I have just realised you are 'down under'. Our son lives in Woy Woy, not that far away in ozzy terms. I shall be visiting again for the whole of February and first week in March in 2025. It is my annual visit and have been at least a dozen times already. He has a large model railway, but is full size for a sailing yacht.

I am 86 and reasonably active but wobble a bit now and again! Just had a cataract operation and the result has been incredible with clearness of vision and colours are so bright and defined it is like going back 40 years. The other one should be done before I travel as well.
The acrylic car paints in UK need to be sprayed with the finishing varnish to stabilise them as otherwise they remain soft.

Do you by chance read Model Boats magazine from the UK?

I find this web site is good but I am not really interested in the old ships of the line etc as I like working models. I have around 10 sail boats and yachts, with rather a lot of electric model boats. including a radio controlled clockwork model boat, scratch built before I was born.

This Mary Ann is my second one and has no number I am planning on rearranging the kit numbers for her and a new name. The other is a model of Lilla Dan, or at least she is built from those plans. As the hull is a plastic Graupner Elke fishing boat and the the full length over the bowsprit is 36 inches (900mm). They both have a working crew on board.
Regards
Roy

Hi Roy,
They're both great looking models, if my Mary Ann finishes up as well as yours I'll be very happy. As it happens, I was travelling through Woy Woy just last weekend on the train to Sydney, it's a pretty area and Brisbane Water is not a lot different in look to Lake Macquarie, so it'll be a nice spot to spend some time at the end of your winter. You mentioned Model Boats magazine...I have subscribed in the past, but not at present, at one point we even had it available in the local library, but it seems that magazines are slowly fading away, except perhaps for a few specialists like that one.

 

[pete_5]

Let's finish off the hull painting
Hi, its’s been a while since I last posted. That’s mainly because the final phases of painting the hull have turned out to be a lot more trouble than I was expecting. As outlined a few posts back, I created my own problems by trying to be smart and using some spray putty over a partially finished acrylic finish. That caused some nasty etching, and it has taken quite a few subsequent coats of paint and rubbing back with wet & dry to get the lower hull paintwork back to a finish that I’m happy with. And what was the special skill required for this?…none, just persistence!

And now that I’m back to a sound, faired surface with the colour I want on the lower hull, I’m ready to have a go at the upper hull colour. The waterline was marked in accordance with the plans, with the usual technique of a pencil taped to the top of a suitably sized block of timber. The only tricks here were to make sure that the keel was inclined at the specified angle (a 5mm block under the bow and the stern on the table) and to make sure that the boat was kept level from side-to-side while moving boat or the marking block (a spirit level across the gunwales). I was happy with the line, so it was onto masking up the existing painted surface.

I had tried a few masking tapes on my sample scrap of wood, and ended up using Tamiya 6mm yellow tape to get a good line, with other products layered to give coverage. From testing, I knew the 6mm tape gave a good clean line with no bleeding and it goes around corners better than wider tapes, so it suited the continuous curve around and under the stern. It is a little tricky in that area getting both a smooth curve and also making sure that the masked shape is evenly balanced (in plan view) on both sides of the keel.



After getting the yellow tape set in place and burnished on the edge that will have the wet paint applied, I then added a layer of green Bear Samurai tape. This is my usual tape for any painting that I’m doing…its thin, gives a good edge and can be left in place for longer than the cheaper tapes. In this case I’m only using it as a protective layer to stick the final masking product, so I didn’t need to place it too carefully. The final product is a plastic film with a masking tape built in (used for automative spray jobs), but I’d had it for about 10 years, and I didn’t want its overly tacky tape directly on my relatively fresh paintwork.

Here it is ready to go…


For the deck, I just taped it with 2” wide clear tape. The one I’m using is relatively stiff and it was happy to stick to the top edge of the gunwale and allow me to trim it to have a 2mm projection over the outside, without wanting to bend over and stick to the outside of the gunwale wall like the masking tape tended to do.

The first paint coat was done with the hull inverted so that I was spraying across the top of the edge of the masked area, rather than down into it…hoping that if I did a light first coat then it would seal against the tape rather than be forced under the edge and bleed. This was particularly important on the starboard side where the vertical rubbing rails are also being painted and the masking has to run across the middle of them…a fiddly job getting a good seal on those areas before starting.

The paint I am using for this section is named ‘Polar Blue’ and is from the Montana Gold range of rattle spray cans. This range is a little unique in that it is designed for artists and is formulated to be ’low pressure’…apparently this gives a skilled artist more control in tight areas. It caused me no end of frustration. I just could not get a consistently good finish without some level of paint spatter (not a problem with any of the other paints being used).

Here is a particularly bad example, highlighted with a very bright light at a low angle, but you get the idea…



It took many attempts and some testing on scrap to work out that I needed to use the ‘low pressure’ to my advantage. I’d been trying to ensure that I got maximum flow through the nozzle (warm can), kept the aperture clean between passes…all to no effect. It turns out that you need to go the other way…slow everything down, a light pressure on the nozzle, slow passes, build light coats to get a complete wet coating without spattering. It’s great stuff when you work it out. A simple wet & dry between coats to remove the prior spots and the job finished up nicely.

Here she is…the paint is still wet in this shot.



So, drum roll…how did it finish up? Did we get a nice edge? Is there any overspray? The mask removal is almost as stressful as the painting!

I’m pleased to say that it finished up pretty well. The wet edge between the upper and lower surfaces came out straight and was nice and crisp. The sections across the vertical rubbing rails were also good. Even the tiny-tiny bit of bleed on the fore edge of first rail in the following pic was easily removed with wet and dry.



But all was not completely well…the masking tape has reacted with the paint of the lower (grey) section. I thought that it might have been residual glue, but it isn’t. The adhesive somehow has a mild reaction to the paint and causes it to soften and leave a mark, like a watermark. Here is a good example (before the Tamiya tape had been removed)…



While that was somewhat alarming, I had seen this before and I’d already done some testing on my scrap piece and I knew that the clear matt top coats can remove this. The entire lower section of the hull was wet & dry sanded with 2000 grit to get a consistently smooth surface and colour, and that also removed most of this ‘watermark’ effect.

So the next step was to add a few coats of Dulux Duramax Clear Matt Acrylic. I like using this product, it gives a consistent matt finish even after a few coats and it looks and feels good. It also finished off the watermark repair and I’m very happy with the final result.



And the bow…



I do realise that I’ve gone overboard with trying to get everything right with this painting exercise, but this model was always meant to be a learning exercise…and that it has been. I promise we’ll be turning the hull right-side up, and get back to some more interesting build content soon.

 

[Roycv]

Hi very good finish do not forget to waterproof the inside hull as well otherwise dampness will get through and swell the wood and cause cracking of the paint. Within the Billing kit build there is a sealed off section at the bow which as a working model I would avoid.

When Norway was occupied during WW2 they insisted that all fishing boat hulls were painted white so they could be seen. Most of the fish they caught was exported into Germany and this was more limited than before. At this time when a boat went out fishing it was supposed to have a soldier on board.

On UK TV there is a film occasionaly shown called Suicide Mission, it is a simple plot type film and about the secret missions of WW2 between Norway and the UK. The boats featured are all of the Mary Ann type but the surprising thing is how very loud the single cylinder engine is as it can be heard from a long way away. So not sure how secret "The Shetland Express" was!


Consequently from 1939 through to 1945 the fishing stocks in the North Sea recovered from the previous over fishing.

Although we modellers like to have nice tidy models they were far from it in practice with ropes and nets all over the deck. As far as I am aware there were 3 crew on board. This is my other Mary Ann, in this photo I have imagined them as a father and 2 sons, one is on the winch and the father and second son are on the trawl boards.
The access to the RC and battery are via a lift out section between the mast and bridge cabin. There is a small lift out section above the rudder for access to controls and attachment etc. There frequently seems to be a small rowing boat kept at the stern as well.

The red painted buoy lashed to the mast shrouds is part of the fishing system.
regards
Roy

 

[pete_5]

G'day Roy, thanks for dropping by for a look. Your suggestions are good ones, and I've already attended to them during the planking process. Although, in retrospect, I should have cut an internal hole in both the first and second bulkheads when I had the chance, so that they could get some ventilation...but I did cut temporary access in the deck to be able to fully seal the interiors with epoxy.

It's always interesting to read a bit about their history, so thanks for that...and I see that one of the streaming services here has the Suicide Mission movie available for rent, so I might look that up sometime.

I've been building up some crew today...I have more than needed given that the skipper is already inside at the wheel, but I figure that I'll give different ones a try to see what works when I get the deck kitted out and the figures painted up.

 

[pete_5]

Preparation for the deck planking
Back to working with timber again…my happy place. The plywood main deck (a false deck) will be planked with mahogany strips, supplied in the kit. This timber is a nice rich colour and will look good when finished with a matte acrylic…even if it’s probably not very realistic for a boat that has been to sea for very long. These strips are a little under 5mm wide, so at 1:33 scale that is close to a 6-inch width which sounds appropriate for a boat of this size. I plan to do staggered-joins of a standard length, mainly to have a go at doing it - the strips are long enough to go full length of the deck. It seems like 18-20 feet would have been a typical plank length. And, although I don’t really need to be concerned about where the joins will be (because they aren’t going to be nailed down), I think it will look good to align them to the frame bulkheads as they show above deck level as the stanchions for the bulwark. The distance between 4 bulkheads is 168mm and that scales nicely to 18 foot 2.25 inches, so that is the length of the planks and I’ll be using a simple 1-2-3-4 pattern for the joins, starting from the centre of the deck. It almost sounds like I know what I’m doing there…but that all came from reading other guides and posts from this and other modelling sites, it’s such a great community for that.

One small disappointment is that the kit doesn’t come with a pre-cut washboard/margin plank (the board that sits next to the bulwark and around the stanchions), to give a nice straight edge to plank against). I have seen examples of this model where that area is not planked at all, and the false deck is just painted in the same colour of the inside of the bulwark. I did a test with some other similar planking I had…one side done as a simple curve inside of the stanchions, and the other side where the planks are cut in around the stanchions…after consultation, the team here at home prefer the later method. So, I’ll proceed with the planking cut in around the stanchions and the long ends shaped to the curvature of the deck at the bulwark/deck interface rather than trying to edge bend such a thin strip to match the curve.

In preparation for the decking, I have painted the inside of the bulwarks in white so that I don’t have to cut that in later and risk getting it on the decking boards. The very edge of the false deck has been painted a dark brown so that any minor gaps are not seen after the planks are laid. I’ve also painted the edges of all the raised deck coamings so that they don’t need to be cut-in later as well.

The planking will be started from the centreline of the deck. I was in two minds as to whether to put the first plank across the middle of the centreline, or to put one on either side. The false deck is made as two separate pieces of ply with a glued seam down the centreline, so in the end I decided on a plank on either side. I don’t expect to get any movement in the join along the false deck as it has been in place from the winter months through to now (mid-summer) with no cracking.

I’m going to use a white glue (WeldBond) for this job, so that any squeeze-out can be easily removed with a wet rag after placement and not leave stains or seal the timber from the final finishes. I also find WeldBond gives a good balance between a little time to move the timber into position but still has a reasonably fast grab time compared to other types of white or PVA glues, it also dries almost completely clear if it is visible.

The veneer planks are well finished and dimensionally consistent, but I’ll do a little preparation before use. The edges have a very slightly feathered edge, so I want to lightly sand them prior to starting. I’m not keen to try doing that to individual planks that are about 0.5mm thick, so I bundled the planks into two lots, put a small rubber band around them and edge sanded them as a bundle, that works pretty well, is quick, and ensures they are all similar in width.



To simulate the caulking between the planks, the edges of each plank will be marked with a black Sharpie, that’s the technique that I’ve used on all other exposed timber planking in this build. It will only be applied to the edge that faces starboard and the end that faces the stern…it can look a little too dark if it is on both edges. The application of the Sharpie was also done while the planks were in small bundles…its quick and you don’t run off the edge like you can with a single plank. I also keep a ‘used’ pen which doesn’t have too much ink, and has a blunt tip for this job, so I don’t get the black bleeding into the timber grain. I’m not going to try to simulate nail heads in this build.



Well, it looks like we're ready to get started...

 

[pete_5]

Deck Planking
I’m ready to start adding the planking…here is the ‘before’ shot. The edges of the deck near the bulwarks and coamings have been painted in a dark timber stain so that I don’t get the white colour showing through any gaps.



I’m laying planks from the centre out to the bulwarks and doing one on each side as I go. I was lucky with the custom forward hatch, I had chosen a width that was a nice even multiple of planks in width…most of it gets covered later in other deck build anyway. The plank pattern was started from the midline plank and is mirrored on each side…each plank starts one bulkhead further to the stern than its neighbour. I like the pattern. I also painted a thin line of stain under each edge to ensure you couldn’t see the light-coloured deck below.



You need to be careful once you get to the stage where planks run the full length of the deck, in fact you need to be careful prior to that, because I found that in the section between the main coaming and the rudder access port I needed to reduce the width of a few planks very slightly to ensure that I got a nice finish against the plank that ran down the outer edge of the main coaming. You can’t see it when its finished, but you want any variances spread across as many planks as practical so that you don’t end up with a single narrowed plank.



Here, we are getting to the tricky point, cutting in around the stanchions. I was expecting this to be more difficult than it was. Provided you have patience and a sharp knife (I use a craft scalpel) and you are willing to scrap and re-do anything that you’re not happy with, then you can get a pretty good finish. I took the attitude that in cases when something didn’t fit quite right…I knew it was only 5-10 minutes work to re-cut and shape it correctly, versus looking at something that will bother me for a lifetime. And any piece that was just slightly off is already a pretty close pattern, so re-cutting is fairly easy. I also tried to cut the difficult end of a plank first, because the other end is usually just a straight cut, so leave it as long as possible, to allow for an end re-cut, until you need to cut it to the correct length.

This shot also shows the quarter deck that was completed earlier in the build (post #87). I did plank all areas under the quarter deck, including the very tricky section behind the rudder access port.



And here are a few pics of the finished product. This one also shows the tools I used and the leftover decking planks. I kept all offcuts and re-used what I could on the way through as I didn’t like the chances of being able to match the strips if I ran out. In the end I had just over 3 and half full planks left and lots of small bits, plus the sawdust churned out by the mini-sander. I found the powered sander made life much easier for getting to within 95% of where I wanted to be and finish off with a file and sanding board, it’s also great for quickly squaring the butt join ends.



It all looks like it happens pretty quickly in a single post like this, but it probably took me a week from start to finish doing a bit of time here and there plus a couple of longer days when it was a little cooler in the workshop.





The final finish (a sprayed matte acrylic) hasn’t been applied yet, I’ll do that after the next step. Which is…the capping rails and scupper covers to be installed