HMS Alert Follow Up and Youtube Video

At the 2016 NRG Conference in San Diego, CA. Photo by Ryland Craze.

And, since Ages of Sail needed some kind of Youtube presence, I took my review photos, construction photos, and completed model photos, and put them together into a slide show with text transitions and some classical music.

I actually put this together about a year ago and then forgot all about it. I was looking at posting some other video recently and rediscovered it. So, here it is in all its splendor, HMS Alert from the Shipyard paper model kit, with some additions…

And, just in case you want to try building this kit yourself, here’s a link to it on Ages of Sail: https://www.agesofsail.com/ecommerce/hms-alert-1777-1:96—shipyard-mk019–paper-model-kit.html

Note that it now appears as part of two other combination sets. In this one, which included Le Coureur: https://www.agesofsail.com/ecommerce/30-anniversary-collection–the-opponents–shipyard-mkj005–paper-model.html

And this one, which includes Le Coureur as well as HMS Mercury: https://www.agesofsail.com/ecommerce/30-anniversary-collection–north-europe-part-2–shipyard-mkj003–paper-model.html

Buying the Tosa Wasen Kit

If you’re looking to buy the kit, there is good news! There is a faster, less expensive method than trying to get it through Amazon-Japan where I got mine. I found out that manufacturer will sell direct to the USA for a very good price. To buy from the manufacturer,  send an email to the company: info@thermal-kobo.jp. For buyers from other countries. I don’t know what his policy is, but you can always ask.

Price for the kit is 13,000 Yen. Shipping is via EMS (A Chinese Express Mail Service that ends with a USPS delivery) for 2,400 Yen. Payment has to be via Paypal, sending to the email address above.

This is a really good price. Makes the whole thing with express shipping only about $150. I went ahead and ordered a second kit.

The only thing that I’m not so sure about is that the kit is shipped in its own box, but wrapped with a bubblewrap bag. It’s a long box, so it seems like it would be easy to bend in half. But, I received the first kit this way and it was delivered just fine. Then again, I generally have good experiences with the US Postal Service here.

It looks like I might have been their first international sale of this kit, as the owner posted a picture of the kit shipping out to the USA on their Facebook page.

When you order one, please feel free to mention where you heard about it. Ω

HMS Alert – Project Completed

Here it is, about a month after I said I should have the model done in about a week. HMS Alert, my first paper model project is finally done. I added the last of the rope coils last night and and working on the case.

This is from the Shipyard line of kits from the Polish company called Vessel. The kits are sold in the U.S. by Ages of Sail (http://www.agesofsail.com). The hull and nearly all the deck details are cut from pre-printed paper parts provided in the kit. Some things, like the mast and spars and blocks are wood, purchased separately.

The sails are cloth, and the cannons are brass, sold by Syren Ship Model Company as small swivel guns. The blocks are swiss pear blocks that were also sold by Syren (sadly discontinued). Some other aftermarket parts were used, such as the gratings and the gun carriages, which I adapted from a detail kit sold by the Polish company GPM for a different model.

Building this model was a real challenge in patience for me – there are a LOT of little parts to cut, and the instructions take a bit of study, like it’s in code. But overall, I had a blast building it. The kits are VERY inexpensive and if you photocopy the parts before you begin, you can usually recover from basic screw-ups – I certainly had a LOT of opportunity for that!

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I highly recommend trying a paper model kit. But not just any kit, I recommend one of the kits from Shipyard. The models are constructed in a fashion that’s closer to wood ship modeling than is true for most other paper kits. These kits are very high quality, but you just need to be aware that you will either have to make just about everything from paper provided in the kit, or you have to provide some of your own materials, like cloth for the sails, dowels for the masts, etc.

If you have a bit more money than time, you should consider getting one of the boxed kits that is part of the Shipyard product line that used to be called Laser Cardboard Kits. These kits contain everything you need in one tidy package. Of course, it’s more money. Also, few part are pre-printed for you. The big advantage is that ALL the parts are laser cut for you – a big time saver. Also, all the boxed ship kits are in a larger 1:72 scale, whereas all the paper ship kits are all 1:96 scale.

This particular model is going to a good home with a fellow ship modeler who has been admiring it since I first brought it to a ship model meeting. He encouraged me to finish it up, and I will be transferring possession of it next week. In the meantime, I’m busy working on a case for the model.

But, this isn’t the last you’ll see of HMS Alert. The new owner and I have made tentative arrangements for me to take it to the Nautical Research Guild conference in October. The model made its first debut at the conference in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2014, so it’s only fitting that it make an official appearance as a completed model in a case this Fall.

I know I’m going to miss working on this paper model. So, I started working on another one that will take it’s place as a low-priority background project. The model is Shipyard’s 1:96 scale HMS Mercury, a 28-gun Enterprize-class sixth rate frigate. At this point, I’m not planning on rigging her. Rather, I’m thinking of making a type of admiralty display model rigged with launch flags. Of course, things change over time, so you never know. Stay tuned! Ω

 

HMS Alert – Project Update

I haven’t posted as often as I have in the past. Much of this has to do with the large number of issues and projects I’m dealing with at the moment. But also, I’m still working during the day, and for some reason this season has been oddly busy. Better that than oddly quiet I suppose, which it has also been at times. Also, I play Japanese folk music which has been demanding extra time this year. But, I’m sure you don’t want to read excuses, you want to know what’s new.

If you’ve been following my blog here, you are probably familiar with the paper model HMS Alert. The model inches ever so closer to completion! The biggest hold up on this model has been in dealing with the fashion trim at the stern and how it fits in with the boom crutches. While there are a couple images in the kit that show the boom crutches, it was not very clear what they attach to. These pieces are just simpl U-shapes with nothing to really to support them, except the taffrail. But it was difficult to find what was supposed to fit under the corner of the taffrail to support the crutches, let alone the weight of the boom cradled in them.

This required some creative ship modeling. What I ended up with seems to work, but there’s no telling if it is what was intended by the kit designers. But, this isn’t particularly surprising for any ship modeler. Those of us who have built even one ship model are accustomed to this kind of problem solving.

HMS Alert stern completed

In addition to the boom crutches, there is a fashion piece that runs down the side of the hull right at the stern. Clearly, there is some error in my model’s construction, because the parts provided in the kit didn’t fit properly. Again, I had to adapt and make new pieces that looked correct that would fit properly in place. It took me a while to do it, though it wasn’t particularly difficult to make. Mostly, it was a matter sitting down and making it.

Beyond these issues, I managed to finally mount the tiller, which is very thin and delicately attached to the rudder post. I also completed the bulk of the rigging, adding lifts, sheets and braces to the spreader yard. I still have to tie off a few things, but the trickiest parts are done.

Next are the braces for the topsail yard and the addition of flag and pennant. Also, I have yet to rig the jib sheets. But, that’s not too much left to do, so I’m hoping to be done by next weekend.

Part of the project is also to build a case for it, but as for the model itself, the end is near!

I’ll post next when all is done.

Shipyard’s 1:96-scale HMS Alert 1777, Paper Model Kit – Part VII

I haven’t posted an update on this project for a several months, so figured it was time.

I now have someone who wants the completed model, so that pushed this project up in priority.  Initially, it was more of a test to see what building in paper was like. But, it was so much fun that I kept going with it. Now, it’s close enough to completion to really push to finish it.

I finished building the carriage guns, blackening them and adding breech ropes. For the ropes, I ended up using Morope brand model rope. The main reason for using Morope was simply to test out the product. This model rope certainly looks good, but it does want to unravel quite easily. I found it best to put a drop of CA glue at the point where I want to cut the line. After the CA dries, I cut the line and there’s no unravelling.

The other model rope I was considering was the stuff sold by Syren Ship Model Company. Initially, I avoided this rigging line because for most purposes, the lay of the rope is backwards. It’s all left-hand or S-laid rope. I’ve since changed my mind about the Syren model rope because it’s so nice to work with. It’s stiff, but flexible, doesn’t unravel, and looks great. However, since I already started using Morope, I figured I’d continue with it.

Not so clear photo of the finished cannon on carriage with Morope breeching rope.

For the cannons, I ended up using turned brass barrels sold by Syren Ship Model Company as swivel guns. One of the sizes worked out perfectly for this models small carriage guns. Making the carriages was the hard part. But, there’s only a dozen to get through.

I then had to add eyebolts at the ends of the breech ropes and drill the bulwarks to mount them. The deck is open and so drilling and adding the eyebolts into place wasn’t too bad. But, the model is more delicate than a wooden one, so it required extra care.

HMS Alert in my shipyard with Colonial Schooner in background. All cannons are in place and rigged with breech ropes.

As you can see, the taffrail is pretty well complete. That’s one feature that really made me sweat. Getting those stanchions all in place and then adding the rail and trying to make it run as flat as possible… I’d put off building the rail for a while until I could muster enough nerve to deal with it. Since then, it’s been mostly smooth sailing.

I worked on the sails some time ago. They’re are cloth and purchased as a separate accessory set available from Shipyard. They are pre-printed, but only on one side. Getting the lines of the cloth to show through required lightly tracing them onto the blank side in pencil.

Bolt ropes were glued around the edges using simple white glue. I also added all the small ropes to the two reefing bands on the mainsail.

I’d purchased the masting set from Shipyard too. This just consists of some dowels and a few laser cut cardboard pieces for the cross trees, mast cap, etc.

For blocks, I decided to use some swiss pear blocks I bought from Syren Ship Model Company. They stopped making them rather abruptly and did a big sell-off before I’d had a chance to stock up on more of the sizes I needed. But, this model doesn’t use too many, so I figured I’d go ahead and use them. Anyway, they’re really nice looking blocks. I made up a batch of paper blocks, but I figured I’d use the swiss pear ones while I had them.

Finally, I began the process of rigging by adding the lower deadeyes into place, and rigging the shrouds. As you can see the main boom is also in place. I had to finish up all the details on it first, then decided I’d better add it before too much other rigging gets in the way.

I have to now add all the blocks I’ll need on the mast, gaff and yards and sails. Then, I’m going to have to tie the backstays around the mast head so I can finish up adding the main and preventer stays which will lead down to the top of the stem. Really starting to feel like I’m getting into the home stretch on this model.

One interesting thing I’ve discovered is that the deadeyes are really pretty securely attached on this paper model. That was one thing I had concerns about. But, I wire stropped them and then simply bent the bottom of the wire to insert into holes I drilled into the hull, forming the chainplate. A faux chainplate is then glued to the face of the wire.

Building the Tosa Wasen – Part 6

The next step in construction of the Tosa Wasen kit is the addition of the deck boards.

This part of the build turned out to be a lot tricker than I’d expected. This is an area where you really want to take your time, and it’s easy to want to rush through it. The deck boards serve as a deck to walk (or sit) on and work on, but they are also designed to be removable, allowing the fisherman access to storage space under the deck. This allows the deck to be kept clear and free of clutter, making for a tidy looking boat.

Beam supports glued into place. The beams are sanded to fit, but I left them unglued, so they’ll remain removable. Ledges are then cut to length and glued to the beams for the deck boards to rest upon.

The deck boards themselves are rather interesting in that they are made so that almost no two are alike. Each one can only fit in one location, with the possible exception of the boards that cover the live wells in the center of the boat. But, given that there are many boards, it would seem to be something of a puzzle trying to figure out which one fits where. To make the positioning more obvious, there are two lines scribed into the top of the boards.

The lines form a sort of an arrowhead with the point at the front of the forward most board, and each compartment has a 3 or more deck boards covering it, with its own arrowhead pattern scribed on it. This makes for a quick recognition of the order of the deck boards and also makes it easier to keep from mixing them up, kind of the way a picture is printed on jigsaw puzzle pieces.

Note that one deck board of each set has a square notch cut into one edge that serves as a finger hole to make it easier to pull up the boards. This also makes it easier to pull up the boards on the model using a paperclip or other small tool.

Live wells with holes in the bottom of the boat, open to the sea. The large one is for the catch, the small one is for bait.

The kit supplies the deck boards as laser-cut pieces, which look they’d make it easy to put them into place. However, in order to allow some variation between models, these parts are cut over-sized, so they have to be sanded to fit. This turned out to be a far trickier than I’d expected, as the Japanese cedar is pretty soft, and really wanted to avoid small gaps between boards. In fact, I used every scrap piece of cedar that I could find in the kit in order to finish the deck boards.

If you’re building this kit, Proceed Very Carefully here.

The next step was to scribe the patterns into the deck boards. I found it easiest to take each group of deck boards which are part of the same pattern set and marking the endpoints on the first and last board, then scribing them all together as a group. I lined them up against a straight edge to keep them in alignment (each set of boards has at least one straight side).

This was pretty much the last of the difficult work. There is one more step that was a little tricky, but in a completely different way, and that was the next step. For those following along with the kit instructions, this is step 33. This involves the construction of the covers for the cargo compartments in the bow and the stern of the boat. If you haven’t built the model kit yet, I would consider doing this work in steps 17 and 18 before the compartments are decked over. It seems it would just be a lot easier.

I’m not positive why the kit has you build the compartment covers at this stage instead of earlier in the build. Possibly, it’s because the real boat might be built in the order shown in the kit. That would be okay, except that trying to reach in with your finger and thumb to get the covers into place without knocking parts into the compartments is pretty difficult.

The kit includes a small pair of wooden tweezers that you’re instructed to build for handling those compartment doors. In the long run, these will be necessary in order to be able to remove or replace these doors without damaging the soft wood.

Completing the Rail

I jumped ahead just a little bit with the compartment covers since I was kind of on a roll with the trickier stuff. So, afterwards, I went back to deal with the rail supports. These are tapered blocks that are added to the rail after it has been constructed. By constructing the rails first, the nice fair curve has already been established and doesn’t need to be engineered into the design. Afterward, the support blocks were added to give the structure more rigidity.

You can see the support blocks of the rail in the photo below, and also in the second photo shown above.

 

Finishing Details

The last steps of the Tosa Wasen kit involve adding the finishing details. These included the rail supports, oar, ringbolts, anchor, oar and some fisherman’s accessories.

Dealing with the details on the boat first required drilling some 2mm holes to accommodate the ringbolts, etc.

Ringbolt and the pin for the sculling oar added to the stern beam.

Ringbolt and, for lack of better term, “belaying pins”, which are mounted on the bow beam.

The kit includes some accessories that I jumped ahead and worked on because they looked fun and interesting. Specifically, there are two wooden seats, a small hand-paddle, and a bailer for scooping water out of the boat.

 

The laser-cut pieces are designed to create nice box joints between all the parts, and as with everything else, the parts go together in a perfect fit. This is true of the bailer as well as the seats. The hand-paddle, called a Tekaki, was the only item here that required any shaping. Everthing else just went together and took a little sanding to soften the edges just a bit.

Afterwards, if you don’t want to display them on deck, they fit quite neatly in the storage spaces below the deck.

 

The Sculling Oar

The boat, like most traditional Japanese boats, is propelled by a long, rearward facing sculling oar called a “Ro”. The sculling oar in this kit makes an accurate representation of a Japanese sculling oar. The plans show the cross-section of the oar at different points along its length, and the scale is large enough for people to see the shape detail.

The oar comes in two main pieces where were milled, not laser-cut, from Japanese magnolia, or “Ho”. This is kind of a grayish colored wood with a fairly fine grain that is harder than the cedar or cypress in the kit.

I varied a bit from the kit design here in that the kit included a tiny screw and nut to fasten the parts together. This is how the real Ro are made today and for the last 100 years or so. But, going for the Edo period look, I decided to wrap them together with rope instead.

The anchor is the last item of this build. Not sure how they form this, but it seems like a piece of cast acrylic. It’s just a ted flexy, but has a good shape to it. It comes a little too thick, so it required some sanding to get it to look a bit more like the photos in the instructions. I ended up speeding up the process by using my belt sander. The part held up well and didn’t melt, so this worked out pretty well.

The anchor’s shape has a bit of taper, so it’s thinner at the top than at the bottom. At the base, there is a hole from a cross piece, making it look something like a grappling hook.

The hardest part was tying the knots. I tried translating the text with Bing Translate, but all I got was a Japanese name for the knot. However, Google Translate came up with “Bowline”, which made life much easier. Basically, there’s a bowline at the base, a pair of half hitches, and the a separate rope ties the anchor cable to the eye of the anchor. The cable is then fastened to the ringbolt on the stem using a bowline.

A short piece of the supplied rope for the anchor cable was needed for the loop that secures the sculling oar. When not in use, that loop of rope stores away nicely under the deck.

The finished project turned out beautifully. I used a coat of natural stain to finish it off and seal the wood. According to the label on the Minwax can, it seals, so that should help the longevity of the model as well as bring out some of the color of the wood.

I’ll eventually build a case for the model. With not masts, a cased Tosa Wasen model will fit easily in the bookcase. My Wasen Display is still running at the bank in San Francisco’s Japantown, but I have plenty to do with other projects, so I won’t worry about adding this model until Wasen Model Display 4.0 maybe in the Summer.

Again, this is a great model kit for those interested in traditional Japanese boats. Email info@thermal-kobo.jp for ordering information. For now, the kit has a very low price – about $130 shipped by express service, payable using Paypal. If you would, tell them I sent you. Ω

Building the Tosa Wasen – part 5

Continuing with the detailing now starting with the bow and stern decks.

The bow deck required installation of support beams. The beams are provided pre-cut, but the ends needed to be tapered to fit snugly against the hull planking.

 

The deck itself is made up of two pre-cut pieces of cedar.

 

The stern deck is made up of 5 pre-cut boards, but the pieces are of different widths. The instructions don’t show you, but the plans provide the labels, so you can locate the needed pieces. You don’t have to read Japanese, but you do have to match the characters on the plans with those on the parts.

To those familiar with Japanese, the labels are all in the phonetic alphabet known as Katakana. In this case, the parts are:

ウカイ

ウカロ

ウカハ

ウカニ

ウカホ

These characters don’t actually mean anything here – They’re basically no different than labeling parts as A1, C2, etc. Most of the parts in the kit are identified this way.

Something else to note is that the pieces aren’t necessarily placed on the sheets in any order. Efficiency of material was very obviously given precedence here, so related parts may be separated  quite a bit. You can see this by how these deck pieces are located on the laser-cut sheet.

 

The deck parts were glued up and I then placed them on the hull and traced the edge onto them using a pencil. This was then trimmed by knife and sanded to fit the hull. As I mentioned before, trimming Japanese cedar with a knife can be quite tricky as the wood is soft and the grain is hard, so the knife catches the grain and wants to follow it, so extra care is required.

 

One thing you’ll notice is that the part labels are etched onto each part, so you have to either hide the labels or sand them off. Or, you could always just ignore them. They’re not that easy to see unless you’re looking closely. In this case, I just glued the boards so that the labels will all be on the underside of the deck.

 

Adding the Rail

We’ve now come to the stage on the Tosa Wasen model where I became a bit confused about the next step of construction. It involves installing a rail, and I suppose that it may simply be a matter of getting accustomed to traditional Japanese building methods which, as far as I can tell, this kit seems to follow quite closely.

The first problem I ran into was that the ends of the long rail pieces that have to be added first. These are notched to fit to the beams at the bow and stern, but the pieces are too long to fit. So, the notch at one end can be used, but the other end has to be cut to deepen the notch.

More than this, where on a western style ship, we’re accustomed to installing framing and then attaching the rail onto that, with Japanese boats, the process is reversed. The rail is installed to only a few attachment points first, then the supports are added afterwards. This is something that I’ve seen in hull construction of Japanese boats too. The hull planks are edge fastened and bent/clamped into place in the process, and the framing is installed afterwards – Lessons in traditional Japanese boatbuilding!

 

Of course, this isn’t limited to the Japanese or Asian ship/boat building. Thinking back, I recall local ship modeler and marine archaeologist Ed Von der Porten (he’s written a number of articles that have appeared in Ships in Scale) talk about modeling a Basque whaler and about how frames were added after the planking process had begun.

Anyway, I finally worked it out in my head, and the rail construction progressed.

 

I completed construction of the rail, adding the pieces that make up the underside. With these in place, it’s a much stronger structure.

To fit the pieces into place, I had to soak the cedar pieces a little bit to impart a slight bend or twist here and there. I took the shortcut of wrapping the pieces with a wet paper towel and putting them in the microwave for about 30 seconds. This was just enough to do the trick.

 

Along the underside of the rail on the upper hull planks there is a laser-scribed line to help position the underside pieces of the rail.

 

The pieces glued and clamped into place

After the rail was completed, I went ahead and added the stem and other hull details, including a thick strake located on the upper hull planking, just underneath the recently completed rail.

 

You may notice that the stem is lighter than the rest of the hull. Like the stern beam, the stem is make of Hinoki or Japanese Cypress instead of Sugi, Japanese Cedar.

Painting the Hull Bottom

Next, it was time to paint the bottom of the hull. The finish of the hull bottoms changed a bit over time. But, what we see as common for the Edo period would be black paint. The kit actually included a roll of narrow yellow masking tape from 3M which worked very well. For paint, I used a model paint sold by Caldercraft as part of their Admiraly Colors line.

There was no particular reason I used this other than to test the paint out. For all other wasen models I’ve built, I used artist’s acrylics Mars Black from Liquitex. In fact, the result using the Caldercraft paint was just a bit shinier than I would have preferred, but it came out fine. I keep trying other hobby paint brands and often end up just coming back to the artist’s acrylics.

 

While I was at it, I went ahead and added the splash rail, which sits on the bow deck. The joint where the two piece meet and also the bottoms of the pieces had to be beveled to fit properly.

 

 

Finally, I built the well area. This was pretty straightforward, though I did start to run into little discrepancies in parts alignment, which is going to happen on kits with pre-cut parts. Also, a reminder that it’s REALLY easy to over sand the kit’s Japanese cedar.

The bottom of the boat will be comprised of covered compartments. So, beams and ledges will be added to seat the deck boards / compartment covers. The well section is the tallest compartment.

Here, I’m adjusting the position of the ledge that I’m gluing into place on one of the well partitions. I used wood from the sheet of deck covers as a guide for exact positioning of the ledge. This assures that the deck covers will be flush with the tops of the partitions.

 

Here’s the completed well area. Note the ledges glued to the hull.

 

Before the deck covers can be added, beams and more ledges have to be added. I’ll cover this next time, along with the covers for the bow and stern holds, making the “Ro”, which is the Japanese name for the long sculling oar, and the final accessories such as the anchor and the bailer, etc. The next installment should see the completion of our Tosa Wasen.

Building the Tosa Wasen – part 4

Last time, I left off with the basic hull completed. Now comes the detailing.

A pair of beams are provide which are attached directly on top of the upper hull planks. These are first tapered from underneath so that at the ends they are reduced to half thickness. The fore beam referred to here as the ツノ or Tsuno (tsue-no), and the stern beam is the オオトコ or Otoko (oh-toe-koh). The heavy stern beam in particular is a common feature of traditional Japanese boats as it is used to mount the rudder on some boats, and usually bears the seat for the sculling oar.

One thing you might note about these beams is that the parts are made from a lighter colored wood. True to the original boat, instead of the Japanese Cedar used for the hull planks, these parts were usually made out of Hinoki (Japanese Cypress) because its greater density and strength.

At this time, there are some extension pieces located at the midships frames (I was calling them beam initially, but now they’re built-up high enough to call them frames or bulkheads). I don’t know what it’s called yet, but this boat has an extended rail outside of the hull and these pieces are the central supports for it.

These small pieces initially had a lot of char from the laser cutting on top and bottom. I was as careful as I could be to not take off too much material. But, the cedar is relatively soft and it sands a little too easily here. But, I seemed to manage okay and essentially got the char off.

By the way, something interesting about that space between the frames that you see in the photo. In the center portion of the hull bottom, there are a few holes. I believe that this might have served as some kind of “live well” that must fill with water through those holes. There are in fact, two sets of holes. Near the forward bulkhead, there are two smaller holes in the bottom, and I believe these open into a smaller, separate section that might have been for storing bait. I’ll report on this at another time after i’ve collected some facts.

So, next step was to add the upper and lower slotted beams, which will hold removable doors to allow access into the bow and stern storage compartments. The ends of the beams had to be sanded down to fit nicely in place.

 

A special template is provided to make sure that the beams are properly aligned. One side of the template is used for the bow and the other side is used for the stern. The angles are different enough so that it’s pretty obvious which side is used for which end of the boat. You don’t need to read Japanese to figure that much out.

One of the issues I ran into was that the tops of the upper hull planks weren’t perfectly aligned. So, I made an extra effort to make sure the gap between the upper and lower beams was consistent.

After the stern pieces were done, I assembled the floor of the bow storage compartment. Interestingly enough, the two pieces that make up the floor aren’t two symmetrical halves. In fact the joint between the two doesn’t even run parallel to the centerline of the ship. You can see what I mean when you look at the photo.

I’ll cover the completion of the holds next time. The next step is to add the deck beams to the bow compartment and then the add the bow and stern decks.

 

Building the Tosa Wasen – part 3

With the lower planks in place, there are next two support beams that were glued in place. Like the pair of lower support beams that the lower planks lock into, these upper support beams are notched so that they fit into holes in the upper planks. When the glue on those beams was drying, the upper planks were cleaned up the leading edges were tapered the same way as the lower planks. The lower planks were then glued to the support beams described above.

As with the lower planks, the upper planks were then initially glued only at the transom and at the stem. Fitting the planks was fairly easy at the stern, but was a bit harder at the bow. There, the planks are hard to seat tightly against the stem since there is some overlap between the upper and lower planks.

This definitely took a lot of hand pressure and the use of medium CA glue since I couldn’t get a clamp onto the bow. I just had to hold the planks tight as long as possible until the glue set. At the stern, the planks were much easier to glue. But, I did run into one self-created problem that was actually less of a problem than I’d realized.

The stern edge of the transom should have been lined up with the edge of the notch where you see the rubber bands in the above photo. I cheated a little in order to fix the problem by trimming the leading edge of the notch, effectively moving the notch forward. A beam is supposed to fit precisely into this notch, so I had to sand the stern edge of the planks just enough so the size of that notch was retained.

But, as it turns out, the top of the transom gets sanded flush with the top of the planks and later the whole section gets covered with planks right up agains that beam anyway, so you wouldn’t have been able to tell that the transom didn’t touch the edge of the beam, unless you looked up at it from underneath the boat.

With the planks secured in place, I then ran a thin bead of CA glue all along the inside of the joint between the upper and lower planks. Lots of clamps made sure that the planks were held properly together until the glue set.

After a while, it was safe to then remove the temporary strong-back, which was a nice and satisfying milestone in the build.

With that, the basic hull is complete and we have something that now looks like a boat. There is still the outer stem to add as well as some stern trim that protects the ends of the planks, but aside from that, it’s pretty much time to start detailing.

 

Building the Tosa Wasen – Part 2

The next stage of the build is the hull planking.

On a traditional Japanese boat, there are basically only 4 planks, 2 on each side, with the upper planks making a nearly vertical surface. The kit refers to the lower planks as カジキ or Kajiki and the upper planks as タナ or Tana. The term Kajiki is the same term used for the lower planking on the Bekabune as described in Brooks’ book and blog. And in fact, the Tosa term for the upper plank, Tana, is related to that of the Bekabune, which is the compound word Uwa-Tana, but run together the “T” becomes a “D” sound and becomes Uwadana.

Diagrams in the kit show that the leading edge of the lower planks need to be tapered. There are measurements shown in the instructions, but the exactly shape of the tapered area is not precisely defined. It ended up being a matter of getting something to look like the shape shown in the diagram – a shape that reminds me of the tip of a samurai sword.

After tapering the leading edge of the planks, it’s then a matter of fitting the planks on. The laser-cut planks have square openings that line up with square tabs that protrude from the central beams on the model. These are actually located slightly aft of center, but they are at the widest point of the boat.

I found that mating the planks to those notches was a pretty tight fit, but it was good that the fit was snug, as this helps hold things together while gluing. I glued the planks to these notched frames first and let that dry, which seems to be how the instructions want you to do it. Next, the planks were fit to the transom and glued only at the transom.

From what I could tell, it seemed that the top of the planks should be kept low against the frames, so that the planks ended up sticking up above the frames by only a small amount at the stern. On the forward half of the boat, the planks seemed to mostly line up with the top of the frames.

The planks were then glued to the stem, which is called the Miyoshi (mee-yoh-shee). The planks had to be positioned so that the very forward edges were flush with or just barely past the stem. After the glue dried, the rest of the planking was glued to the bottom and the frames using medium CA and the applicator tips supplied in the kit. Those, by the way, were a perfect fit for ZAP brand glue bottles.

I found it a bit of a struggle to hold the boat while trying to glue the lower planks into place. The strong-back in the center is only glued in at the top and bottom of the transom and the stem, so it’s very flexy. It took a while to learn to hold the whole thing while bending the planks and gluing them into place.

I should also mention that the kit never has you soak any of the planking. It’s long and thin enough that it flexes pretty easily. I suppose it might have made sense, as a ship modeler, to try to pre-bend the planks. But, it certainly wasn’t necessary and I managed without soaking or pre-bending the planks.

I left the whole thing to dry and then came back and sanded the upper edges of the lower planks. When dealing with the upper planks, the will overlap the edges of the lower planks, and to make a good bonding surface, or watertight surface in the case of the real boat, the outer edge at the top of the lower plank has to be sanded roughly vertical.

On the real boat, iron nails would be drive into the bottom edge of the upper plank and into this flat edge of the lower plank. Of course, there’s more to it than that, but that’s the basic idea.

 

The model is just about ready to receive the upper planks or the Uwadana.