Cutty Sark deck details

The famous George Campbell plans, available through the ship's website ( http://shop.rmg.co.uk/cutty-sark/collections/cutty-sark/product/cutty-sark-general-arrangement-plan.html ), have good color notes. I don't have mine in front of me, but my recollection is that the deckhouses on the main deck originally were plain, varnished teak. Some time later, the recessed, round-topped panels were painted white. So were the inset panels on the poop deckhouse.  The roofs of all the deckhouses were unvarnished teak, so they'd be a dull grey.  (I'm pretty sure the caulking between the planks on the poop house was white - but that's pretty irrelevant on 1/350.)

Other things I remember pretty firmly:  main rails - varnished teak.  Bulwarks below them - white.  Bulwarks above the main rail - varnished teak, with white recessed panels.  Waterways - filled with cement, painted red.  Cargo winches, pumps, etc. - black. Wheel box, wheel, fiferails and pinrails - varnished teak. Hatch coamings - white. Hatch covers - bare wood, with canvas covers.  Boats - white with black gunwales. My memory isn't 100% reliable, of course, but I'm pretty confident in those recollections.

For some reason the ship's store now sells the three sheets of Campbell plans individually, rather than as a set.  Here's the sail plan:  http://shop.rmg.co.uk/cutty-sark/collections/cutty-sark/product/cutty-sark-sail-plan.html .  And the rigging plan:  http://shop.rmg.co.uk/cutty-sark/collections/cutty-sark/product/cutty-sark-rigging-plan.html . 

At 12 pounds for the set, one of the biggest bargains in ship modeling.  Highly recommended.

I'll be interested to hear how Don gets along with that little kit. I believe it originated with Imai, so it deserves to be taken seriously.

Managed to find a few shots of the inside of bulwarks.  Looks like the lower deadeyes are rigged inside the bulwark.  The chain plate then is much narrower. It looks like the lower deadeyes are secured to the ship structure by iron rods either passing through the deck or to the bottom of the bulwark structure which must then be a pretty substantial structural member!  Different!

Because the PE sheet has a limited number of sets of shrouds, and I must make them match by height, I will not be able to necessarily get the correct number of shrouds.  Hope no one counts!

Don, I promise I won't count.

In the real ship, the iron "chain plates" pass through holes in the pinrails and are riveted to thbulwark plates. The lower deadeyes are mounted so they don't quite project above the monkey rail. Makes for a sleek, clean hull outboard.

Just how much of that should be represented in 1/350 I'll leave to the individual modeler

Don

I am building the 1:220 scale Cutty Sark and these are the instructions which show what colour they think it should be. Might be some help.Also the instructions for a large model.

http://manuals.hobbico.com/rvl/80-5401.pdf

http://cuttysarkdrydock.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/the-cutty-sark-instruction-sheets/

IIRC looking at photos the pin rails are supported by diagonal steel brackets that angle down into the back of the waterway. There's a WIP around here where the modeler invested considerable time and effort to clean up that whole part of the Revell model.

I suppose at 1/350 its a non-issue. I have a 1/400 model of a fully rigged ship- its SMALL!

Don I'll be very interested to see how that PE works.

Les, I'm not sure who or what created the Revell instructions; they may in fact be very well researched. Revell did a good job with the originals of their ships, it's when they started cloning them that things capsized. But I would be a little skeptical.

Here's what Len Roberto had to say on Modeling Madness:

"As you would expect, the ship’s appearance changed a lot during her long career. The Revell instructions need to be corrected in many areas.  Here is a revised color plan:

Hull: a mixture of copper and zinc oxidizing to a greenish tinge.

Topsides:  Black. No boot topping. Edge of covering board white. No other white lines, and no gold stripe.

Lower masts (iron):  White.

Topmasts & Topgallant masts:  Wood. Vancouver spars, varnished.

Doublings and caps white.

Bowsprit:  White, inboard and outboard.

Jib boom:  Black.

Dolphin striker:  White.

Whisker booms:  Black.

Yards: Black (no white tips)

Figurehead:  White.

Tops, spreaders etc:  White.

Deckhouses and sides of monkey poop:  Varnished teak. Tops of deckhouses bare teak with white cove. Monkey poop bare teak with margin plank in varnished teak.

Pinrail & topgallant rail:  Varnished teak.

Bulwarks inside:  White.

Deck fittings (windlass, capstan, pumps, bollards etc.):  Black.

Davits:  White.

Stanchions:  White.

Decks:  Scrubbed teak.

Boats:  White with teak gunwale strake."

Les.61

Don

I am building the 1:220 scale Cutty Sark and these are the instructions which show what colour they think it should be. Might be some help.Also the instructions for a large model.

http://manuals.hobbico.com/rvl/80-5401.pdf

http://cuttysarkdrydock.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/the-cutty-sark-instruction-sheets/

Thanks, Les.  Only problem with that first one is that the scan resolution did not allow me to read the colors in English.  Could you merely post what the colors are for colors A through K?

GMorrison

IIRC looking at photos the pin rails are supported by diagonal steel brackets that angle down into the back of the waterway. There's a WIP around here where the modeler invested considerable time and effort to clean up that whole part of the Revell model.

I suppose at 1/350 its a non-issue. I have a 1/400 model of a fully rigged ship- its SMALL!

Don I'll be very interested to see how that PE works.

Les, I'm not sure who or what created the Revell instructions; they may in fact be very well researched. Revell did a good job with the originals of their ships, it's when they started cloning them that things capsized. But I would be a little skeptical.

Here's what Len Roberto had to say on Modeling Madness:

"As you would expect, the ship’s appearance changed a lot during her long career. The Revell instructions need to be corrected in many areas.  Here is a revised color plan:

Hull: a mixture of copper and zinc oxidizing to a greenish tinge.

Topsides:  Black. No boot topping. Edge of covering board white. No other white lines, and no gold stripe.

snip

Many thanks- exellent color info!

I also am curious to see how well the PE works.  I have built several of the old 1:600 Airfix and Heller ships.  Nice to build but the shrouds were hard to do and did not do ratlines at all :-).  Even did a 1:1200 white metal kit of Le Superbe, but did only minimal rigging.  I hope there is enough building of small scale sail for someone to continue to do PE rigging stuff. I picked up this set at the Omaha Nats, and have never seen them advertised since.

The White Ensign website offers several shroud/ratline sets. I haven't tried them, but in the pictures they look excellent.

Those 1/220 Revell instructions are most interesting. On that basis it looks like a really nice kit. My one substantial beef would be the way the yards are molded - with the studdingsail booms run out. That sort of forces the modeler to use the vac-formed sails, to which I'm constitutionally opposed. (A 1/220 Cutty Sark with all those 35 sails on it would look like a vac-formed blob.) But the serious modeler could move the booms inboard, and mount the yards in their lowered positions on the masts.

One potentially confusing detail about the Revell painting instructions: they show two colors on the figurehead. Actually that's correct. The figurehead represents Nanny the witch, from Burns' poem "Tam O'Shanter. Nanny wears a short chemise, or cutty sark. The carving is painted white overall, with a fine gold line on the hem of the cutty sark. On 1/96, quite doable. On 1/220, tough. On 1/350, I'd forget it.

Mr. Roberto's color scheme looks right, with two small exceptions: the jibboom is varnished wood, and he left out the red-painted cement waterways. If I were building a Cutty Sark, I'd try to get that one confirmed on the basis of the research that was done before the recent restoration. But the last time I was on board her, in 1994, that red stripe around the decks was quite prominent.

Those triangular gussets inside the bulwarks on the various kits (including the 1/96 Revell one) are bogus. In reality the bulwarks are supported by iron rods, running from the bulwark just under the pinrail to the inner edge of the waterway. There are also several shorter rods supporting the widened sections of the pinrails (my I-phone keeps insisting on "pintails"; sorry about that) abreast the fore and main masts. Again, probably worth fixing on 1/96 scale. On 1/350, if you value your eyesight and want to build any more models in this lifetime, forget it.

Beautiful ship, with the potential to be a superb model.

jtilley

One potentially confusing detail about the Revell painting instructions: they show two colors on the figurehead. Actually that's correct. The figurehead represents Nanny the witch, from Burns' poem "Tam O'Shanter. Nanny wears a short chemise, or cutty sark. The carving is painted white overall, with a fine gold line on the hem of the cutty sark. On 1/96, quite doable. On 1/220, tough. On 1/350, I'd forget it.

Now, please excuse the imp in me, as, all of this nautical talk has put me in the mood for a foot tapping song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOw3w-00Jqw

I always thought it was a bottle of whiskey...

As we speak my daughter is in Edinburgh in a summer job. Next week she goes down to London.

Hmmm...

I pulled out my Scientific kit last night, to take a look at the instructions. They are nicely drawn, but not really helpful.

Here's a link to the Burns poem - with a modern English translation that almost makes it comprehensible to non-Scots.

www.robertburns.org.uk/.../tamoshanter.htm

I fear the whiskey is named after the ship - not the other way around.

My wife tells me that a good translation of "cutty sark" would be "camisole." Why anybody would shout "Well done, camisole!" in such circumstances is still beyond me.  I guess you have to be Scottish to understand it.

The ship had two traditions associated with the poem.  The owner, Jock Willis, presented a tin cutout of a cutty sark to her, to stand at the main masthead.  And the sailors would put a bundle of horsehair, representing Meg's tail, in the figurehead's outstretched hand when the ship was homeward bound.

One criticism of the Revell 1/96 kit is that the figurehead is far better looking than the real thing.  The real thing looks like...well, a remarkably ugly witch.

Oh Lord!

Pass the Haggis!

My countrymen...

Actually according to Robbie Burns, Nannie Dee was "ae winsome wench and waulie".

Bill Morrison, are you listening?

Don

Numbers in brackets are the Revell Colour code for the 1:220 Cutty Sark by Revell

A = 50% Matt Medium Blue (55) + 50% Matt Blue (56)

B = Matt Sand (16)

C = Copper (93)

D = White (301)

E = Brown (381)

F = Black (302)

G = Wood Tan (382)

H = Matt Black (8)

I =DB Railway Green (363) (only used for light on Starboard side so figure almost any medium/dark green would be OK especially for 1:220 or 1:350

J = Red (330)

K = Metallic Grey (91)

L = Matt Carmin Red (36)

M = Gold (94)

Look forward to seeing the progress.

Cheers  Les.61

Don

I also have some instructions from a larger Cutty Sark model that has the instructions on how to do the Antique Wash on the hull and the Deck painting. If you can send me a private message with your email I can email you the instructions.

Cheers

Les.61

You probably know this Don. The ship was sheathed in brass (Muntz metal). That is a bright yellow brass.

Its a bit of a chuckle. Les is of course correct- the ship could use some bottom weathering, and there's been plenty of discussion here about the pros and cons. Not to mention marine growth.

But here at least is a picture of a real ship that...

looks like a model.

This architect will not opine on the merits of the display.

I outline my paint sceme and modifications in the *Revell 1/96 Cutty Sark* build log.  I based my desisions on current images and historical ones.  Not to mention the bulwark/water ways  mods that needed to be made.

Good luck.

Rob

Thanks for the offer, Les.  I think with all the other posts and references folks have provided, I have enough now,  Modelers who do not frequent forums don't know what they are missing!

Don

Check out cuttysarkdrydock.wordpress.com/.../the-cutty-sark-instruction-sheets for the washes, etc. Different scale but same ship

Longridge has a good book on the Cutty.

www.amazon.com/.../0852424264