Bertie Builds a Boat - Lady Isabella - Scots 'Zulu' Herring Drifter - Finished ! ! !

[Bertie McBoatface]

5 minutes ago, ColonelKrypton said:

Good morning Bertie - well, still morning here, the birds in the cedar hedge are singing up a morning serenade. 

 

Absolutely spot on.  It can be a very meditative state and overall feeling. 

 

cheers, Graham

 

Indeed. It’s made me feel good today. I’m lying in a field while the dog hunts … dandelions 

[Bertie McBoatface]

 

I've raised one of the sails. It's been a six hour job over two days 2.5 yesterday and 3.5 tonight. It's been rather an epic adventure but it's now much too close to bedtime for me to write about it today, sorry. You will have to be patient - but not as patient as I've had to be!

[steve5]

sorry I have been so tardy in joining your build , it's beautiful mate , and that rigging look's first class to me .

[Bertie McBoatface]

8 hours ago, steve5 said:

sorry I have been so tardy in joining your build , it's beautiful mate , and that rigging look's first class to me .

You are welcome, the voyage isn’t quite over yet. 🙂

 

I was a little disappointed by the rigging so far but I was comparing it to a remarkably good boat on another site which was claimed to be by a first timer. 
 

However, I’ve seen ‘strangers’, turn up here with excellent models claiming the same thing. They harvest a ton of likes and then are never seen again, at least not under that name. I suspect they are actually well practiced modellers pulling a fast one to mess with our heads! 😏
 

This morning I’m more sanguine and for a first attempt, I’m thinking the rigging is ok. 
 

I’ll give you the full story some time today. Sail Tales!

[Bertie McBoatface]

Rigging. It's really just tying knots in thin string, innit? Like doing up your shoelaces, yeah? Actually, it WAS like learning to tie shoelaces - when you have never done it before and you are four years old and your fingers aren't entirely under control!

 

 

On these wooden boat kits, and come to think of it, on plastic biplanes too, you rarely get instructions or even sequences of operations. You get a diagram and work out how you want to do it for yourself. Sometimes, in either case, you don't get much of a diagram and work from photographs or even the usually suspect box art. 

 

I started with the sail itself, which seemed logical. It's been dyed sepia with a tea bag and dried on the radiator, months ago. It's all wrinkled and floppy and I wanted it to look more like there was a bit of a breeze so I followed the example of that other 'first time builder' I mentioned and inserted a wire in the bottom hem to give it a bit of shaping. 

 

 

It was a bit of a struggle because the end of the wire, cut with snips, was jagged and caught in the thread used to sew the bolt rope (blue arrow) to the edge of the sail. (Note too that the bolt rope is already coming loose and finishes very close to that corner loop or cringle.)

 

 

I sanded the end round and it slipped in all the way with no tearing or other unpleasantness. This is tinned copper wire 0.45mm dia. You can judge from the final look whether it was worth it.

 

 

I think it helped with the lay of the sail to some extent but the sail itself is flat cloth, not the ballooned shape of a real one. Maybe I'll put wire in all three of the unsupported sides on the next sail?

 

 

The next job was sewing on the robands  (originally 'rope bands') which attach the sail to the yard. Note the gap between sail and yard where the robands have stretched.

 

 

The robands were attached to the bolt rope (or head rope) but I had doubts about the way that was attached to the sail so I looped through the sail as well. This reveals my nervousness about it all falling off at some inconvenient time. I think I'll have to get over that because by trying to make everything PERMANENT, usually with little touches of the hated superglue, I'm losing the adjustability I need to make lines lie convincingly as you will see later. I didn't wax these threads either, which made them fluff up as I worked them; the reason being that I didn't want to interfere with the operation of the (unnecessary) CA. I must learn to trust the knots that worked rather well on the real boats in gale force winds.

 

    

 

I sewed the robands in with an ordinary needle and the help of one of these threaders, which are brilliant time savers.

 

 

Noticing that the bolt rope was bunching up I stopped working my way along in one direction. I sewed both ends and then filled in from the middle to keep things even.

 

 

This is the front lower corner of the sail as I did it.

 

 

I based my work on this diagram, seizing at the blue arrow. I like seizing, because I can do that now and I am rather proud of the fact. 😄 

 

I missed the seizing of the bolt rope indicated by my red arrow. That would have been very useful in preventing some oncoming unravelling problems. 

 

 

And this was the plan of how to attach the sail to the boat. It doesn't make clear what method should be used to tie the lower edge down, though the simple word 'tie' was a big clue that I missed, and where has the long cord, seized onto the corner of the sail gone? Yep, the plans are no more reliable than the written instructions! Considering the premium price of the kit and the fact that it's recommended by the manufacturer as a beginner friendly kit, I think these contradictions and mistakes in the documentation are a serious shortcoming. 

 

 

This is the more complicated rear corner attachment but with my 'helping hands' soldering 'vice' thing, it wasn't too tricky to tie. "Half the job is finding a good way to hold the workpiece".

 

 

My sail now looked rather like the plan so I turned my attention to the yard.

 

 

It's held to the mast with 2mm parrel beads which act as bearings allowing it to be raised and lowered without sticking. They are threaded onto a cord tied onto the yard and are the pingiest things I ever saw. Or didn't see as they ricocheted around the flat.

 

 

There wasn't a lot of information about attaching the robands to the yard so I researches and came up with this old diagram.

 

 

Fortunately, the heavy duty man-of-war stuff on the left doesn't apply and it was a simple matter of reef knots. (That's presumably why they are called reef knots because attaching a sail to a spar or a stay is reefing.) The sail was on and I was so happy, I forgot to photograph the attachment of the yard to the mast. It was a simple job though with no drama.

 

 

Except, when tied on, with a bowline knot (though it looks a bit of a mare's nest due to fluffing), the corner of the sail is riding way too high.

 

 

Which meant cutting it off and tying it on in the simplest way possible. Never mind, it's all good practice...

 

To be continued...

[Bertie McBoatface]

 

This is the other lower corner of the sail which I've highlighted in red in this and the next diagram. It was handy to have the length of the line specified even though I misread it as cm and used ten times too much!

 

 

This was my first contact with the block and tackle. These are the things that have baffled me for years when I see them in model ship rigging - bits of wood suspended in mid air by strings headed off in all directions! How the flappity-flop do they do that? It turned out to be easier than I thought. 

 

 

The rope was seized onto the sail and then the block was seized onto rope so that it was trapped between the two lashings.

 

 

I experimented with a metal strapping on the lower block and tied it to the rail as the plan said. The wire looks a bit crude but then, so does the block. (There are ways to make your own.)

 

 

I fastened the lower block too tight and the block was jammed against the gunwale which made it look untidy when it was all threaded up (rove). The threading was really easy which was a nice surprise. I had dipped the end of the rope in CA so that it acted as it's own 'needle'.

 

Note another missing seizing (my fault) at the dotted red line and the consequent slippage of the bolt rope (blue arrows). Fortunately I saw it in time to stabilise it with superglue.

 

 

The last one of the day was the yard lift (between the blue arrows). This is a triple block arrangement used to raise the yard and possibly soaking wet sail to the top of the mast. Real 'blocks in the air' stuff but not much harder than the earlier double blocks as it turned out.

 

As the lift had to pass through a hole in the mast the block had to be attached with the sail in place.

 

 

First, make the loop that will go underneath the upper block with a simple reef knot, tied around a suitably sized drill bit.

 

 

Second, improvise a way to hold the block steady while you fasten it to the sail. "Half of the job is finding a way to hold the workpiece". I must stop saying that but it's so very useful to remember it and make something that works each time instead of struggling for ages.

 

This rig looks rather like the fly-tying vices that @ColonelKrypton suggested, thanks Graham!

 

 

String goes around the block. And that is a very small peg.

 

 

Seizing goes on, tightening up the rope. It's held in place with glue. I'm using black thread to make it more visible on this 'training model' but I like the colour contrast too.

 

 

Trim the ends with the sharpest and finest scissors you can get. 

 

 

This is the smaller diameter rope being attached to that loop under the top block. again with a seizing but I'm getting more confident now and tying it on though I still dabbed on some CA, just in case..

 

 

Then it was a simple matter of threading it through the blocks six times and finding out that it was way too short. D'oh! The length of this piece is NOT specified in the plans and I lacked the experience to understand how long the rope needs to be in a block and tackle. I understand now though! That was three quarters of an hours work to be repeated but the second time around it only took half that. 

 

And hey presto, a sail is set in only six hours.

 

Rigging. Easy to do and really difficult to do well. 

[Bertie McBoatface]

PHEW! That update took hours to write and was not fun. It was like saving up the ironing until you run out of shirts and have to press the entire wardrobeful. 

 

Daily short updates are much easier, when it's fresh in my mind. And probably more likely not to fall into TLDR territory.

[roginoz]

The update may not have been fun, Old Fruit, but it made interesting reading and the end result looks splendid ! This is great practice for when you get going on HMS Bellerophon !

 

I would second the purchase/purloin/ borrow a fly tying vice for future use, I find mine invaluable when rigging biplanes where multiple bits of string are involved.

Care to share where you obtained that lethal looking pair of scissors ?

Rog

[ColonelKrypton]

56 minutes ago, Bertie Psmith said:

This rig looks rather like the fly-tying vices

 

Indeed it does. That is a very creative use of cross locking tweezers and a secondary vise. Good idea and will have to keep it mind. Sometimes something so obvious is not so obvious.

 

You have done very well on your build of Isabella.  The Devil is in the details and you continually do well keeping the Devil at bay.

 

cheers, Graham 

[Bertie McBoatface]

1 hour ago, roginoz said:

The update may not have been fun, Old Fruit, but it made interesting reading

 

Well that's alright then. I really struggled with remembering what happened and in which order!

 

1 hour ago, roginoz said:

This is great practice for when you get going on HMS Bellerophon !

 

Indeed. There's the Beagle first though. At least the Beagle. I may feel the need to do more of the smaller kits before launching (ha) into something as big as Billy Ruffian. I had a peep into the box the other day (looking for a free gift that had been packaged inside it) and it was quite startling, to say the least!

 

1 hour ago, roginoz said:

I would second the purchase/purloin/ borrow a fly tying vice for future use, I find mine invaluable when rigging biplanes where multiple bits of string are involved.

 

Yes indeed. They are a lot cheaper than I had expected so I'll definitely be getting at least one, though I can imaging many situations where two would be ideal.

 

1 hour ago, roginoz said:

Care to share where you obtained that lethal looking pair of scissors ?

 

They are very handy and don't require the twisting hand motion that you need with ordinary scissors so they are brilliant for working in limited access situations.

 

I found them in my toolbox, scissor drawer. I know I probably bought them for this job but I have no memory of ordering them. (I probably should worry about this memory problem but I'll forget all about it in a minute.) I checked back through my amazon orders and that was no go. And then I found them! They are Modelcraft Rigging Snips and I seem to have obtained them from Cornwall Model Boats, UK. There's a curved blade version too and a heavy duty one which I also seem to own.

 

https://www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk/cgi-bin/sh000001.pl?WD=scissors&PN=Modelcraft-Mini-Snips-Straight-T_PSC1002.html#SID=428

 

 

[Bertie McBoatface]

1 hour ago, ColonelKrypton said:

 

Indeed it does. That is a very creative use of cross locking tweezers and a secondary vise. Good idea and will have to keep it mind. Sometimes something so obvious is not so obvious.

 

You have done very well on your build of Isabella.  The Devil is in the details and you continually do well keeping the Devil at bay.

 

cheers, Graham 

 

Thanks Graham.

 

I think Isabella has taken me out of the zone of unconscious incompetence, where I didn't know what I didn't know. I am now consciously incompetent in some areas. I'm not knowledgeable enough, and I lack skills and experience but I am aware of the fact and can correct it. I dare say there are still many parts of the hobby of which I am totally unaware, but that might be a kindness...

 

 

[steve5]

that sail is excellent bertie , you put a lot more effort into your sail , than I am doing on mine mate , 😄

[Bertie McBoatface]

5 minutes ago, steve5 said:

that sail is excellent bertie , you put a lot more effort into your sail , than I am doing on mine mate , 😄

 

Ha! Thanks for the boost but I've seen your fabulous Friar Tuck and I think you are being very kind to me. 😁 On the other hand I am putting a lot of effort in because I'm having to do it all twice, dammit!!! 🤣

[Bertie McBoatface]

We are off and running with the bally old Beagle now, so if you have been following this old load of rubbish with anything like pleasure and don't want to miss any more of Berties Boaty Blunders, trot over there and join the pack today!

 

 

 

[roginoz]

Thanks for the scissor info @Bertie Psmith, duly ordered.

 

Not a bad price for so surgical an instrument. A few other odds 'n' ends in there I didn't know I needed..........!

Rog

[Bertie McBoatface]

 

I've been attending to a little bit of rigging today. This time I waxed my thread which made everything much better. I also came up with a way to tie the seizing in place at both ends so with the help of the wax, I wouldn't need to make everything rigid with CA. This was a lifesaver when I tied a block on upside down and was able to rotate it within the loop of cord instead of having to start over. I still put a tiny drop of CA right on the knot of the seizing, just for piece of mind.

 

 

This was my set up today. It's fun finding ways to hold things just right. It's actually very entertaining finding out how to rig a ship. I'd compare it to a medium difficulty crossword puzzle. So far I've been able to figure out most things for myself with a little help earlier from a few videos on YouTube. It occurred to me today that I bought books on how to do this and haven't yet read them - I've been too busy rigging!

 

 

This was the result of an hour's work. It's called a burton tackle and is the Zulu's equivalent to the shrouds of a bigger ship, bracing the mast against side forces. It still doesn't count as standing rigging because there is only one of them, rigged on the weather side of the boat and when there's a change of tack and the wind is coming from the other side, the burton has to be quickly swapped over to the 'new' weather side.

 

 

It's difficult photographing long thin things and string must be the worst!

 

 

The crew has started to arrive. This is a 3D print the files for which cost me £6 and the resin, according to my son the printer, cost about 5P. If you look closely at the figure, or better still at the file on screen, you can see that it was a scan of a porcelain figure - the sort of thing you might buy from a seaside souvenir shop. Nevertheless printed at approx. 1/64 I think it's a charming little figure and looks pretty easy to paint. I now have six of them so he can have a change of clothes for every day of the fishing week. "I'll dae nae fishin o' th' Sabbath!" says fisherman Fred.

 

He really puts the thing in perspective - it's a huge boat even though it looks like a rowing boat due to its shape.

 

Vanguard used to sell prints of this figure for £16 but they have changed the pricing since I last looked and you now get three different figures for £18 which is a much better deal and one that I'd have taken myself.  I noticed too that the sails are now included in the basic price of the boat which is currently £162.80. The sails were an additional £36 when I bought mine so that's a significant reduction. Well done Vanguard!

 

Only one hour of rigging today. I didn't get the flow state this time because my eyes went on the blink (geddit?) but I'm happy with the look of the thing with its TWO 'blocks in the air'.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Here's a picture of the real thing.  Some of you may be tut-tutting at the tangled coils of rope dumped on the deck of my Lady Isabella. Remember, this isn't a Navy ship, and Flemishing the rope's ends wasn't something that appealed much to the drifter men.

 

 

What a mess!

 

[Bertie McBoatface]

 

Remember the previous sail when I almost pulled the bolt rope out of the sail? Well this time it fell all of the way out before I even had a chance to seize it. Honestly, why put the end within half a cm of the corner where the tension is going to be applied? It was bound (ha!) to pull through the one or two turns of slippery polyester thread that held it, or didn't in this case. I bodged it back together with superglue. Grrr!

 

This paragraph is optional philosophy/psychology rambling. 😉  And then I lost all of that 'grrrr' by slipping back into the FLOW. I noticed I was there again because when I made my many mistakes and had to re-do stuff, I barely reacted emotionally at all. I just thought "O. I'll do that again." and did it. No swearing, no self-blame. And when it went right? Just a passing smile and do the next thing. That's instead of a sigh of relief and a trip to the biscuit barrel. Honestly, this is all very Zen. And I swear it's carrying over into daily life too. (Or maybe that is working the other way round? Yet daily life has its share of shadows at the moment? Dunno really and dunt care much - just enjoying.)

 

 

I made a new rigging tool. This is for making hanks of rope of various sizes and degrees of messiness. I replaced the spike and pencil lead in the compasses with drill bits. I wrap the cord around the bits tightly, apply a little glue and let it set, then bring the bits together and the hank slips off. I think the steel bits are still slightly oily, being unused so the glue isn't sticking to them.

 

 

And another sail goes up. That makes five altogether, the mainsail and fore sails. Geddit?

 

 

The rigging, which individually is time consuming and delicate, but not really complicated, is beginning to accumulate and look a lot more impressive than it really is. I've read that rigging a ship model with every single rope actually looks daft and very unreal, and that model shipwrights just keep on adding pieces until the thing looks 'done'. There's no danger of overdoing this simply rigged little boat but I'm getting to a point where it's approaching 'enough'. I'm hoping that one more sail will do it otherwise I'll have to knit one and a half (sixtieths of) miles of fishing nets and pile them on the deck.

 

 

There's one of my patent hanks. And I can see that that belay is not going to hold when the wind blows. I should have gone under the rail before the figure of eights. Never mind.

 

 

This side is better.

 

 

I've read that one way to get rid of the hairy bits is to quickly pass a flame over the beeswax soaked, tightly stretched cords. I look forward to seeing someone else doing that on their model.

 

'Night all.

 

 

Edited June 18, 2022 by Bertie Psmith
apostrophe catastrophe

[Bertie McBoatface]

The last of the sails is raised which leaves me with only one more cable system to rig. That's a simple stay for the aft mast, thought there is one last block and tackle involved.

 

I swear that I will not sleep again until this boat is finished fully rigged, although Captain Fred the Fisherman and one or two little spots on the Lady might have to be painted tomorrow.

 

That will mean that I only have one project running, which will be novel. I promise a photo of the fully rigged boat before close of play.

[Courageous]

Nice bit of knitting there Bertie.

 

Stuart

[Bertie McBoatface]

 

This time I glue-reinforced that bolt rope end before doing anything else. Yo can see why it was required. You can also see how coarse the fabric of the sails actually is, despite its fragility. I have come to the conclusion that fabric sails on a model boat are never going to look good purely for scale considerations. I have similar doubts about metal foil finishes on aircraft and copper sheet standing in for copper sheet on the bottoms of boats. It just don't look real, man!

 

 

I reinforced the cringles too. This reminded me of having my haemorrhoids banded.

 

 

I did finish the rigging. The boat now lacks only a driver, a nameplate and the crutch for resting the foremast in when it's lowered for fishing. All of these are going on tomorrow and that's that for Bertie's boat number one.

 

 

So what do you think of the sails/rigging? 

 

I've already mentioned my feelings about the sails = overscale rubbish that doesn't hang right.
 

[EDIT. Following @mark.au's helpful comment below, I've revisited this post. My comment above is very hard on myself and the kit. In fact it’s just a fact of sailing ship modelling. Many model ships are left with bare poles for this reason.]

 

 

And the rigging? = overscale rubbish that doesn't hang right. It's all too loose really and the hairy string is awful.

 

[EDIT As above, savage self criticism, which isn’t good for me at all. Objectively, it’s a decent first attempt at something rather new and different.
 

The word “rubbish” was one of my father’s favourites when he sat in judgement. How curious. 😏] 
 

I believe that much better quality stuff is available but it would have been good to have it in the box. I'm interested in the idea of using silk thread next time, my home town being a silk town from way back.

 

 

One last thought, these things are huge. It has the surface area of a couple of 1:48 B-17s. It's as long as a 1/16 Centurion Bridge Layer tank. It's half as tall as the old Airfix Saturn V. It's a heck of a job to photograph and it takes up more than half of my display cabinet. Fortunately, you don't churn one out every week!

 

Edited June 20, 2022 by Bertie Psmith
On reflection...

[steve5]

very impressive work bertie .

[mark.au]

Almost everything we do is overscale; it’s physics, if it were scale it wouldn’t support its own weight, thinking particularly of the sails and a tonne of other things on boats and airplane models.  You’re being a bit hard on yourself there, though there are better quality ropes I believe.

 

I think you’ve done a great job there; no way I’d know it was your maiden voyage, so to speak.

[Bertie McBoatface]

5 hours ago, mark.au said:

You’re being a bit hard on yourself there

Thanks Mark. That’s a good point, firmly made. I can be a savage critic of myself if I’m not careful. I’d never speak of anyone else’s work like that, would I? 
 

The overscale aspect of modelling is a fair comment too. Representing cloth sails with real cloth or wooden decks with real wood are things that require some forgiveness of the medium by the observer. 
 

In the morning light, after a decent sleep, my Lady Isabella does look rather splendid. 
 

Thanks for the reality check, Mark. 

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday Bertie, I think you've done a superb job, even more so as it's your first. As for overscale, I think @mark.au makes a very good point. My stuff such as gun barrels are certainly overscale. A lot of it would be invisible otherwise.

Don't be too critical of yourself or your model. She's excellent.     Regards, Jeff.

[Bertie McBoatface]

2 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Bertie, I think you've done a superb job, even more so as it's your first. As for overscale, I think @mark.au makes a very good point. My stuff such as gun barrels are certainly overscale. A lot of it would be invisible otherwise.

Don't be too critical of yourself or your model. She's excellent.     Regards, Jeff.

 

You are quite right (even if it makes me hideously uncomfortable being praised), she looks very lovely in the morning sunshine. 

 

It's been a marvellous experience getting into this new genre of our hobby and I can hardly wait to get on with the Beagle. However, I am going to take some time off to catch up with some of those real world jobs. I find to my horror, that I'm living in untidiness bordering on squalor. For months now, I haven't used the vacuum cleaner for anything other than getting sawdust out of my laptop, nor the iron for anything other than bending planks! 🤣

 

It's a little late in the year but I feel the need for some spring cleaning. 😇