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6 September 2007 THE HULL PLANKING: The hull of Teazer is planked in two layers. The first layer will be in Lime Wood and essentially is to provide a stable base for the second layer of planking in Walnut.
THE CLINKER EFFECT : A modeller generally has to “fight” to get a reasonable hull covering and shape when applying the first layer of planking. In addition, despite bevelling the upper edge of each plank it is still impossible to eliminate the “clinker effect”, a style of boatbuilding where one plank is laid slightly on top of and overlapping the plank below. This is not desirable for a Sloop-of-War, nor were they built this way, but it is an inevitable side effect of working at this scale. Happily this can be overcome, by severe sanding and by applying wood filler to any hollows or inconsistencies in the hull shape where needed.
THE GARBOARD STRAKE : Hull planking begins from the bottom of the gun port strip downwards and at the same time from the garboard strake (the first range of planks laid, next to the keel) upwards. It is vital to lay two or three planks on one side and then two or three planks on the other side of the ship or the keel will be bent by the not inconsiderable forces exerted upon it by the hull planks.
TAPERING : Each plank has to be tapered along its top edge before fitting. This is because the distance between the top of each bulkhead down to the keel is further amidships than it is at the bow. This requires each plank to be offered up to the hull and carefully marked and a taper cut before fitting. The taper usually begins about 8cm from the bow. This is necessarily a slow process and so far I have laid about 20 planks (10 each side) which has taken about 15 - 20 hours and is more or less the half way point through the 1st layer of planking.
Shipwrights of Kydd's time cut each plank in a saw pit and shaped them with adzes; I have nothing but respect and admiration at their skill and industry.
Overall I have spent about 35 - 40 hours on Teazer to date, but I am very pleased at how much progress has been made for a model which began construction on 18th August 2007.
Whilst the hull looks quite untidy at this stage, she will start to look far more ship shape once the first layer of planking has been completed and sanded.
6 October 2007 SHE HAS A FINE FIGURE! Now we have the first layer of hull planks in place and you can begin to see Teazer's lines. In fact you can see why this hull shape was so successful. These relatively small vessels had excellent sailing qualities and were tough, fast and very seaworthy. The Royal Navy deployed them all over the world and they were able to withstand the worst the weather (and the enemy) could throw at them. You will notice a strong “belly” to the ship, but this did not sacrifice speed as the lines of the hull near the stern funnelled the water aft very efficiently, so you had a nice combination of strength and speed. The wide deck also made it ideal as a gun platform and the “belly” to the ship gave her excellent stability once ballasted.
THE SAHARA IN SOUTHPORT : Sand, sand and more sand! Wherever you look there is more sanding to do. Sanding the hull once the first layer of planks is fitted is a dirty job! Overall Teazer will require about 20 hours of sanding starting with 240 grade wet and dry sandpaper and progressing through 400 grade and finally 600 grade. This produces copious amounts of sawdust and leaves you entirely coated in the stuff.
Next I will feel the outside of the hull to identify any hollows or rises. It is better to do this with your fingers which are far more sensitive than your eyes, and apply a little wood filler where required, which will be sanded back so that the hull shape is entirely consistent.
WALNUT OVERCOAT : Once the rather scrappy looking first layer is in place and sanded, it is time to start the cosmetic second layer of planking in walnut. The original vessels were of course double planked in the same way but English oak was used throughout more often than not. These timbers were seasoned and then treated with a witch's brew of linseed oil and other (closely guarded) secret substances which varied from shipyard to shipyard and it was also common for a crew to apply their own concoction to their vessel when she was re-fitting or in harbour. The end result of this treatment was to give the timbers quite a dark appearance and this is aped in model ships by using walnut as the second layer of wood which gives just the right colour.
SHEER HELL : Applying the second layer of planking is a very slow and fraught process as it cannot tolerate any mistakes and the utmost care must be taken. I begin by laying my first plank around the area near to the bottom of the main wale; this involves laying guide planks out of scrap wood to decide on the line that the first plank is going to take. This is partly an aesthetic process but I also try to begin where the sheer of the hull at the bow begins to fold under itself. This is one of the most difficult areas to plank and I ensure that the plank can lay entirely flat to the hull and follow its own natural curve as this will make the whole process a little easier as the planking progresses.
There is a pronounced curve to the planks at the bow where they are much higher than the position of the same plank amidships. As we progress down the hull this upwards curve will become less and less pronounced until the plank is more or less at the same level from bow to stern. As we approach this `levelling off' point we will need to start tapering the planks at the bow.
STERN COUNTENANCE : I have planked the stern and stern counter as the hull planks fasten to their outer edges. I have also shaped the rudder hole in the stern counter ready to receive the stern post and rudder at a later stage.
So far I have laid 12 planks (six each side) which has taken the best part of two days (15 hours) and there will be many more weeks work before the hull planking is finally complete.
18 January 2008 HULL UP: The Christmas period has been rather busy for me so I have not been able to spend as much time on Teazer as I would have liked, however, I have managed to get the second layer of planking in place and have spent several hours fine sanding the hull. The sanding of the hull not only removes the unwanted rough edges but also removes your fingerprints and my fingertips are as smooth as glass at the moment - burglar for hire anyone?
SLIPPERY SLOOP: In any event the process of sanding leaves the hull as slippery as a Teflon coated politician and once or twice Teazer almost flew across the room as she slipped from my grasp.
BANZAI BULKHEADS: It is at this stage that the protruding bulkhead tabs on the inside of the gun port strips are snapped off. There are several ways of doing this but the best way, I find is to take your courage in both hands (fortified with a drop of blackstrap) and grasp the tab in a pair of pliers and ...SNAP off she comes. It is a bit disconcerting as you expect the entire gun port strip and half of the side of the hull to break off also but all is well.
STAND BY FOR BOARDERS: The layout of Teazer requires a bit of modification to the standard Cruizer Class vessel and in order to incorporate Kydd's cabin I have to board up the rearmost Gun and Sweep ports which you can see.
The bulkheads will also be planked on the inside, but first we must lay the deck planking.
Next I will be filling in any small gaps in the hull planking (yet more sanding), putting on the main wale and painting the waterline in. I will then move onto the deck planking and the inner bulwark planking. Then we have to start thinking about Kydd's cabin which is where things will really start to get interesting...
30 January 2008 WALE OF A TIME: The main wale is made up of three 3x1mm planks which are laid around the hull after carefully measuring their height from the keel, from the ships plans. The most difficult part of this process is to get them at exactly the same height on each side of the ship and any small deviation is painfully obvious.
The wales are then carefully sanded and painted dull black along with the stem.
WAR PAINT: Whilst I had the paint pot out, I thought that this would probably be a good stage to paint in the gun port decoration. In this respect, I am fortunate to have the considerable knowledge of Joseph Muscat, who is an authority on Maltese Built vessels. Joseph confirmed that a thick white band with a thinner stripe of black on either side was entirely accurate and consistent for Maltese vessels of her type and time.
The painting required a lot of masking off, for which I used a specialist type of masking tape that graphic artists use when customising cars. I also used 4 coats of paint on each stripe with gentle sanding in between each layer. Again utmost care had to be taken when plotting the run of each stripe as they had to match up on both sides of the hull where they met at the stem. Painting Teazer's hull has taken a surprising amount of time, which I estimate at between 10 - 12 hours.
BOTTOMS UP: When Teazer was first placed into Kydd's command, she was painted with "white stuff" below the waterline (usually a lead based paint). It was not until she returned to home waters did she receive a copper bottom. After first checking with Julian, he decided that she should look as she did when Kydd first saw her and so I painted her waterline "off white" with a lead based paint that had been researched from the Admiralty archives to get the colour match as close as possible. Indeed, all the paints that I will use on Teazer are from the same range of specialist paints researched from Admiralty sources. I should mention though that it is impossible to get an exact match as the paint pigments of the time varied greatly.
15 February 2008 DECK PLANKING: Working at this scale (1:64), I need to cut the deck planks into 8.5cm lengths which broadly correlate to deck planks of about 20 feet long. This was more or less a standard length used for most vessels and to cover Teazer's main gun deck, this will mean cutting 190 planks. Deck planking was also caulked (the gaps between the planks tightly filled with oakum - unpicked rope fibres which were then tarred) and to simulate this in a ship model we have to colour the circumference of each individual plank with a black felt tip pen. I have previously carried out a fair bit of ‘trial and error’ experimentation on this process to find a felt tip pen which gives just the right results and doesn't put too much ink into the plank. This is because when you sand the planks prior to varnishing; the black ink bleeds into the planks and makes them quite dirty looking which is not what we want. Indeed, how many times have you read Julian's words about the crew holystoning the deck into a pristine condition so what we are after here is a nice neat bright looking deck?
GOING STRAIGHT: For Teazer, I have decided on a 3 step deck planking pattern. This means that every fourth plank lies on the same axis (much easier to see from the photograph than to visualise). In order to keep this pattern consistent, I first have to mark up the false main gun deck with guidelines to keep me on the straight and narrow so to speak.
CAPSTAN CONUNDRUM: Because I have had to move the companionway forward to accommodate Kydd's cabin, I was not happy with the lie of the capstan, which now sat just a little bit too far forward for my liking.
I therefore filled in the original capstan hole in the false main gun deck and cut a new one just a little further back and now it lies equidistant between the companionway and the grating just behind it.
STICKY PICKING: The deck planks are individually glued using carpenters glue sparingly applied with a toothpick (perhaps a modeller's most valuable tool!). I must start laying planks at the centreline of the deck running from fore to aft and then work out to the bulwarks. Once all the deck planks are in place they need sanding and coating with 4 coats of matt polyurethane varnish.
BLOODY BULWARKS: Now I can finally plank the inner bulwarks which can be quite a tricky task as all of the gun ports and oar sweeps need cutting back and the access from the deck side of the bulwarks is quite restricted. Once or twice I have come pretty close to trimming my cuticles back (to the second metacarpal) with my scalpel!
To finish off I give the inner bulwarks a lick of red ochre paint to hide the gore of battle. The trick to getting a nice crisp line from the bottom bulwark plank (the one that lies next to the deck) is to paint it red before you glue it to the bulwark. That way the deck is preserved from any involuntary twitches when painting and you get a perfectly straight demarcation line between the deck and the bulwarks.
Finally, a coat (or four) of matt polyurethane varnish and we are ready to move on.
19 February 2008 CABIN FEVER: My wife has taken to calling me “Yehudi” of late as I have been working on Teazer “faster than a fiddler's elbow”. As a modeller, you often get these ebbs and flows in the construction of a model and over the Christmas period there was something of a hiatus, so I try and make the most of the periods when I am sailing on a bowline!
Now it is time to start construction of Chez Kydd. I begin by making Kydd's cabin roof (aft upper deck) as a template out of card to get the exact size and shape. I then transferred this onto a piece of thin plywood, cut it out and planked it in much the same manner as the main gun deck. Next, I glued support brackets along the insides of the bulwarks to support the cabin roof.
PANELLING: I then made another card template for the bulkhead that will effectively form the wall and entrance to Kydd's cabin from the main gun deck. This is transferred on to thick (0.5cm) plywood, cut out and shaped to the deck's subtle camber athwartships. This bulkhead needs to have companionway style access doors and I think, a little panelling which is in keeping with the aesthetics of the time. I first sketched the doors and panelling on a piece of 200 gm card. Next, I carefully cut out the panelling recesses with a surgical scalpel and finally I stuck the card onto the plywood bulkhead.
DOOR DECISIONS: Originally, I intended to have Kydd's companionway doors to the starboard side of the bulkhead; however, it became apparent that this was not entirely practical as they would be obstructed by the rearmost starboard cannon. I therefore decided to position the doors centrally in the bulkhead which would bring Kydd out immediately behind the ships wheel. A coat of red ochre, a couple of dressmaker pins for the door handles and four bespoke iron door hinges and we are well on our way.
Getting the bulkhead and the aft upper deck aligned properly and glued into place is a little tricky but with plenty of perseverance and patience finally all is well.
HATCHING A SOLUTION: I then completed Kydd's access doors by placing a `companionway style' sliding hatch cover in the aft deck itself immediately above the bulkhead doors.
When I was originally questioning Julian about the makeup of Teazer, I raised the issue of how Kydd managed to get into his cabin as the clearance between the main gun deck and the aft deck (or the roof of his cabin) was only about 4.5 feet (the height of the gun port bulwarks) and Kydd would almost have to bend double to ease himself inside.
Once inside there is no problem as Julian had previous exposed in his books that there were several steps down from the main gun deck and therefore the roof clearance inside the cabin was more like 5.5ft - 6.0ft. I suggested that a companion way style hatch would solve the problem and allow Kydd to enter his domain without any contortions and Julian agreed that this was a reasonable solution. It is most certainly easier to see the solution from the photograph than to describe it.
FORMIDABLE FELINES: Once the aft upper deck and cabin bulkhead are in place, I can complete this part of the construction by drilling the catheads with the four holes ready to receive the cathead rope work, cutting the slots into the bulwarks to receive the catheads and fixing them in place. Finally I can now position and glue the deck rails into place and I am now ready to move onto the stern and quarter galleries.
22nd February 2008 LET THERE BE LIGHT! First I made a card template of the stern gallery to perfect its size and shape. Again, I transferred this onto thin plywood and cut it out. Next I plotted the general design of the stern lights and again transferred this onto my plywood and painstakingly cut out the window recesses as required. I am reminded during this tricky process that many sailors used to make the most exquisite ship models whilst on board in their spare time. How they managed this on a platform that constantly moved on three axes, with poor lighting from a purser's glim and with very limited tools is beyond me. Truly amazing!
CARDBOARD TEMPLATE: The window frames are made from deck planks, which I have split into one half of a millimetre wide strips. I then made a cardboard template that fitted perfectly into the stern light window recess and drew around this onto the sticky side of a piece of masking tape. Next I placed the outer frame of the each window onto the masking tape and applied thin cyano glue liberally all over the frame. Then I did the same for the inner parts of the window frame and when the glue was dried, I carefully cut the frame from the masking tape with a scalpel. A splash of white paint and the frame is ready for glazing for which I used thin clear plastic. I then made a set of curtains for the windows (which in my opinion help to give the model a bit of life).
I painted the stern gallery French Blue, which despite its name, was a colour often used by the Royal Navy, particularly for stern galleries.
ECCLESIASTICAL ELEMENT: The gingerbread was more problematic as I had no idea as to how it looked. I did a bit of research on gingerbread and found that after 1776, the Navy had reduced opulent ornamentation as it was too costly to build and maintain (and of course subject to regular damage in ship to ship actions). I contacted John Wright at Jotika (the company that produced the Cruizer kit) and he mentioned that their model for HM Yacht Chatham had pre cast gingerbread that might fit the bill. In fact the pre-cast gingerbread was ideal for Teazer and you can see the two angelic heralds either side of the stern lights which, for my mind, were almost playing for the lady's pleasure (that is “The Lady Teazing” figurehead) and in my opinion were very much in keeping with the overall tone of the vessel. This was also in keeping with the very Catholic nature of her Maltese origins and I surmised that most Maltese shipbuilders would have tried to incorporate an ecclesiastical element into the gingerbread design.
Between each window is a very simple decorative motif, and similarly just below the stern plate gingerbread. All that is left is the nameplate.
The area for Teazer's name sits just under the bottom of the stern gallery and is made from two 3mm planks glued together and cut to shape. This is then painted black and Teazer's name is painted in a sans serif font in yellow ochre.
CHALLENGING TASK: The preparation of the scratch stern gallery overall has been a very challenging task particularly for a novice modeller such as myself, and has taken quite a lot of time to achieve (around 30 hours). I am reasonably pleased with the overall look, although I must admit that I am a bit nervous as to the reaction of Julian and his readers and I hope that I have not disappointed anyone too much.
Next will be possibly be the most difficult aspect of the model to build (for me at least!) and that is the construction of the scratch quarter galleries!
26th February 2008
DRAWN, HUNG AND QUARTERED! Here I have to express my eternal gratitude to Robert Squarebriggs, a fantastic modeller and wood carver from Canada. Bob provided several sketches of the constructional steps and parts involved in the preparation of the quarter galleries. Whilst I had an idea of how to go about it in my own mind, Bob's drawings made the process entirely clear and more importantly, gave me a real confidence boost in tackling this crucial part of the construction.
Each quarter gallery has around 17 separate components in their make up and these all have to be made from scratch, constructed as a unit and then fixed to the hull.
Rather than explain the process at length, which would necessarily be verbose, I can do no better than to show you Bob's constructional drawings (a picture is worth a thousand words!). Each part had to be individually shaped to the sheer of the hull and therefore there was an impossible amount of cutting, carving, offering up to the hull and measuring and then the process would begin again until the part was just the right shape and size. I again glazed the windows and continued the French Blue and Gold colour scheme adopted for the stern gallery.
It was also at this stage (whilst the deck was clear of cannons, bitts, water pumps, etc) that I also planned where the two brass pedestals that Teazer would be mounted onto, would lie on her keel. Once plotted, I then drilled two holes into the keel ready to receive the large screws that pass through the pedestals and ultimately fix Teazer to the baseboard.
Next up will be the rudder and then I will move onto the deck furniture and finally Teazer will really start to look like a sloop of war once the 16 cannons and other paraphernalia are assembled, rigged and situated.
6th March 2008 A PICKLE OF PINTLES First the gudgeons and pintles are put in place and this requires an endless amount of measuring and dry fitting to ensure that the rudder lies at the correct height. It is at this stage that I also fitted the rudder straps which you can see, strengthen the gudgeons and pintles and these are individually nailed into place. To do this I have to cut each nail down to a length of about 1.5mm and then hold the nail in place with tweezers whilst I hammer it into place with a small tack hammer. Not a barrel of laughs when you have been blessed with slab sided hands as I have! It is crucial during this process to get the angle of the rudder straps correct on both the rudder and the hull of Teazer; otherwise the aesthetic effect is spoiled. Once everything is in place I can paint the waterline in on the rudder to correspond with the waterline of the hull. The rudder moves quite freely and is not glued or permanently fixed in to place but hangs suspended within the gudgeon and pintle assembly. I will probably add rudder chains later, once I can locate some suitable chain material and I will be able to unship the rudder whilst I fix them into place to make the fitting much easier.
DECKED OUT IN SPLENDOUR The first task is to make up the deck gratings and this is done by first assembling the hatch combs, which are brushed with watered down PVA glue and lined with 2mm walnut coamings. The dimensions for each grating are taken directly from the openings in the main gun deck and the coamings are bevelled around their circumference and mitred at the corners. Then I place a piece of rough sandpaper on the deck of Teazer (rough side up) and sand the bottom of the grating until it has assumed the subtle camber of the deck. This is a long process and leaves you with very sore fingertips as it is inevitable that they get sanded along with the grating in the process. I repeated this process for each of the four hatches on Teazer's main deck. A coat of matt polyurethane varnish and they are ready to be glued into place.
PERFIDIOUS PUMPS Next it is time to make up the elm-tree water pumps, this being an exercise in patience as they are very treacherous, fragile and fiddly. Essentially, the seven parts of the pump assembly have to be glued almost simultaneously (This is a good point at which to practice your more salty seaman's oaths!).
BITTS AND PIECES The fore, riding and mainmast bitts are then made up and painted red ochre and pins are glued into their undersides. This anchors the bitts to the main gun deck and is essential as they take a fair amount of strain when all the rigging is belayed to them at a later stage.
HEAVE HO AND A TIGER The capstan is then assembled from 14 separate parts and the deck grips are glued into place to give the seamen purchase when winning the anchor. The capstan itself is painted red ochre and varnished. I may make capstan bars but I think at this stage I will wait until I am sure that they will not obstruct any of the standing and running rigging.
FREE WHEELING The ships wheel is then prepared with a slight modification. The Cruizer class vessels (having a single deck running fore and aft) had their tiller ropes rigged above deck, running from the wheel via blocks to the bulwarks in a sort of zig zag pattern until they fastened to the tiller. For Teazer this cannot be done as Kydd's cabin obstructs the run of the ropes and therefore I have opted to put two small cowlings under the ships wheel which show the ropes running through the main gun deck, where they will travel aft along the deckhead of the lower deck to the tiller which in fact lies just under the floor of Kydd's cabin. This was a common tiller configuration for those vessels that did not have an unobstructed fore and aft main single deck.
BOXING THE COMPASS The binnacle is made from scratch and houses two compasses (larboard and starboard) with a lanthorn space in between. I have glazed the three binnacle windows to complete the construction.
I also have made up the crew companionway hatch, which is made up from no less than 30 separate parts and took me three an a half hours to fully assemble! It is stained with a walnut dye and dressmaker pins used as door handles. The brass slide cover handle is made from a piece of 1mm wire which is bent into shape.
The elm-tree water pumps, fore and main mast bitts, capstan, companionway hatch and ships wheel are not fixed into place on the main deck at this stage and the photographs show them dry fitted only. This is because I need to construct, position and rig Teazer's great guns first and I will need as much unobstructed access to the main deck as possible in order to do this. Once the cannons are in place I will glue the these items of furniture into place with perhaps the exception of the elm-tree pumps which are rather fragile and I may keep them to one side until the entire model is almost complete.
27th March 2008 GUNNING FOR TROUBLE Finally we get to Teazer's raison d'être, her armament. Each cannon is made up from 22 separate parts (not including their rigging), so for Teazer, this equates to 352 parts in total!
To assist in the process, I made a small jig out of scrap wood to ensure that all the gun carriages were the same height and consistent in shape. The gun barrels are made from brass and each part is painted before assembly. The trunnions are locked into place with caps which are nailed into place (using nails cut down to 1mm in length) and the barrels move freely up and down on their assembly. Each barrel muzzle is painted red ochre to complete the assembly.
COMPROMISES: I originally fully rigged the first cannon with gun haul tackles and rear training tackles, but at this scale, it did not look very good. There was simply too much cramped into too small a space and the 2mm blocks I was using looked out of scale. Using 1mm blocks was not really an option as firstly, I would have to make them myself and this would take a couple of months at least to construct the 96 blocks required for the guns. Secondly, the eyelets I was using as ring bolts would have been hopelessly out of scale on 1mm blocks and I am not sufficiently skilled enough to fashion my own eyelets to suit the reduced scale. Again this would have put the construction back by a further couple of months even if I was able to accomplish this.
Model ships are full of compromises and it is rare to find a model which has every single aspect of its construction entirely accurate. What usually suffices is to give the eye an impression of what is required and usually the brain fills in the blanks (a bit like the Rorschach ‘ink blot’ test). I therefore decided to only rig the breeching, the main restraining rope (that runs around the cascabel) and whilst this much simplified the guns rigging, it did not detract too much in terms of aesthetics, particularly when you take into account the ships standing and running rigging which will be quite extensive and will take a lot of the attention away from the gun securing ropes. I hope this does not disappoint anyone too much but this was a case where less is certainly more and the guns (and therefore the model) looked far better with the rigging simplified in this manner. For my own part, I was quite disappointed, but philosophical particularly as I had to discard the 32 ‘rope cheeses’ that I had made in advance for the gun haul tackles!
SLOOP O' WAR Once all the guns were permanently fixed in place, I then glued the rest of the deck furniture that I had earlier constructed into place.
When you look down Teazer’s main gun deck, she is starting to look like a right nasty piece of work and despite her relatively modest dimensions and armament; I for one would not want to be on the business end of her broadside!