Pyro Schooner

Everything continues to look great.  What a beautiful ship!  One has to wonder how much plain old aesthetics influenced the design of such a vessel.  She's a working craft (though speed, for the purpose of beating the Bluenose, certainly played a big role in the laying out of her hull lines), but she didn't have to be this pretty in order to catch fish or run races.  The overall proportions of the hull and spar plan are really something to behold.

Regarding gaffs, booms, and running rigging - the golden rule is, do as much preparatory work as you can off the model.  Figure out how every line is going to lead in advance; don't put a spar into position and then figure out how to rig it.  You'll be drilling holes and installing eyebolts, blocks, etc. on every spar.  It's far, far easier - and less dangerous to the model - to do that sort of thing with the spar clamped in a vise on the workbench. 

My vague recollection is that the spars in that kit have the right basic shapes but not much detail.  The plans you've been using should fill in all the gaps.  If I were doing it, I'd start by making a crude drawing of each spar and marking on the drawing where every eyebolt, block, and other fitting needs to go.  Then I'd install all such fittings, paint the spar, and tie every line to it that I could, before finally installing it on the model.

In order to maintain the level of detail you've got on the rest of the model, you'll probably want to make parrels for the gaffs and booms.  Extremely easy.  In a ship like this, the parrel consisted of a piece of rope or heavy wire with a series of wooden rollers on it.  If there's an arts and crafts store in your vicinity, it probably can furnish some glass beads to serve as the rollers.

As you probably know already, when the sails of a ship like this are furled the gaffs are lowered.  Among the most prominent lines in the running rigging are the peak and throat halyards, which run from the gaffs to the mastheads.  Since they're carrying the weight of the gaffs, they ought to be taut.  Sometimes making them taut is a little tricky, because they aren't heavy enough for gravity to do its thing in a proper scale manner.  A solution is to drill a small hole in the heel of the gaff, and make it fairly deep - say 1/4" or 3/8".  Drill a corresponding hole in the mast at the appropriate point, starting on the aft face of the mast and not quite poking through the front of it.  Then use a piece of piano wire to "pin" the gaff to the mast.  That way you won't be relying on the rigging to keep the gaff where it needs to be - and the wire won't be visible on the the finished model.

I've said this before, but I'll take the liberty of saying it again:  I hope lots of people are watching this thread.  It's a great demonstration of how to break into the hobby of sailing ship modeling.

After a break for a few months to work on some other projects, I've started to work on the schooner again.   Using the technique described by Prof. Tilley in the thread "Real Cloth Sails" to make furled sails using silkspan, I made a mailsail for the Thebaud.   It takes a little practice, but I think it looks good.  Although when you try to push and pull the wet silkspan into the proper shape, it sure would be nice to have a couple extra hands.  Here are some pictures:

Once I put the sail in place, I made the mast bands from some solder which I formed by wrapping it around a dowell.  Since solder bend easily, I was able to bend them around the mast pretty easily.  The parrels are glass beads and wire.  From looking at pictures of real and model schooners, it wasn't very clear how the furled sail was held in place.  In some pictures, it looked like it was wrapped with a single line and in others it looked like several loops tied around it.  So I just tied a few loops around it.  Next is to rig the halyards. 

Thanks for looking, and as always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

 

Phil 

 

Looks mighty good. I especially like the way the folds in the sail lie along the outer end of the boom.

The deadeyes, shrouds, and ratlines look great.  This thread deserves careful study by anybody looking for a good way to get into sailing ship modeling.

Beautiful ship Phil!

I really enjoy reading this thread.

 

 

Very nice work!

On the subject of schooners: does anybody know the origins of the Hobbycraft 1/120 scale "Bluenose Schooner" kit? I assume it's a re-issue of the Aurora Bluenose but am not sure.

I've wondered about that question more than once.  I built the Aurora Bluenose when I was quite young; my recollection is that I didn't like it much.  (I have an extremely vague memory that the stacks of dories in the waist may have been molded integrally in port and starboard halves - that is, the port halves of the bottom, middle, and top boats in the "stack" were in one piece.  That would have made the "stack" look pretty silly from the top.  My poor old memory may be totally wrong about that, though; maybe somebody out there has one of  the kits and can correct me.)

The Hobbycraft kit has been around for quite a while now (at least ten years, I think), but I've never happened to see the inside of the box.  The company used to be called Hobbycraft Canada, and the Bluenose has a special place in Canadian tradition; the kit may well have originated with Hobbycraft.  I can't recall having seen a single review of it anywhere.

Here are some updated pics.  I finished the foresail and the rigging of the halyards and sheets.  

I'll probably finish the dorys next.  Even though Thebaud didn't do very much actual fishing, I like how they look and the fill the empty space on the deck.  I am also thinking about the adding the jib, but  I don't have a very good picture of how it's attached.   I assume that the jib has clips or rings on the front edge that slide up and down the jibstay?   When I did the mainsail and foresail, I attached the sail to the boom and gaff, then folded it up before attaching it to the ship.  I'm not sure the best way to do this with the jib.  I'll probably do a practice test, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks for looking, and as always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Phil

Looks beautiful as always.  You're into the home stretch.

The jibs are no harder to rig than the sails you've already done.  Each jib is secured to its stay by a set of fittings called jib hanks, which look for all the world like overgrown versions of the standard dressmaker's eye.  (Don't get the obvious idea, though:  the smallest dressmaker's eye is way too big for 1/96 scale.) 

There's one hole, and one hank, at each edge of each individual sail cloth, and the cloths are about two feet wide.  If you look at a drawing of how such a sail is made, you'll see that the cloths run parallel to the "leech" and "foot," rather than the "stay" side of the sail.  That means the holes for the hanks are considerably more than two feet apart.  (That concept is about ten times as hard to describe in print as to show in a drawing; it's actually quite simple.)

If you want to make scale jib hanks, it isn't outrageously difficult - though it does take some time.  Drive a couple of small, headless pins into a piece of wood, about 3/16" apart.  (That's a guess, but not far off.)  Take a piece of brass wire, soften it over a candle flame, and form a loop in it around each of the pins.  Slip the wire off the pins and bend the center of it into a U shape.  For an extra touch, solder the loops.  (Use lead-free solder, which is easy to find nowadays; after all this work you don't want your model to be subject to "lead disease.") 

If that's a little daunting in terms of numbers, on this scale it probably isn't necessary; you can get away with simply passing a small piece of wire through the hole in the sail, around the stay, back through the hole in the opposite direction, and snipping it off short.  (Actually that's a reasonably accurate representation of how the wood jib hanks of previous generations were shaped.)

As the jib gets furled it slides down the stay, and forms a disciplined pile at the foot of it.  Here are some photos of my little Phantom model, which is on 1/96 scale:  http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/JohnTilleyPhantom/photos/photo2.html

The Phantom has a somewhat different rig than the Thebaud; the Phantom's foresail had (I think) a fixed gaff, with no boom.  Otherwise the two rigs are pretty similar.  Notice how the jib gets shaped into neat folds, first to one side, then to the other, as it comes down the stay.  It's interesting to watch a real sail get furled; that seems to happen naturally.

Hope that helps a little.  Keep at it; this is going to be a first-rate finished model - quite soon.

Hope it's OK to post my own question here, but my Hobbycraft Bluenose kit finally arrived in the post today (bought it on eBay a while ago) and I'm curious about the origin of the kit parts!

It's obviously not a simple reboxing of another manufacturer's kit, as all the parts are on neat sprues with the Hobbycraft logo, and are well-moulded without too much flash. However, somehow I'm wondering whether it might be a re-tooled copy of the old Aurora kit.
The stacks of dories are moulded as a single unit in two halves, as jtilley mentioned they were in the Aurora kit. And the moulding style of the hull halves looks somehow rather similar to the hull in the Aurora Cutty Sark kit.
Another distinctive feature is the dolphin-shaped supports on the stand, although this could have been added by Hobbycraft

Here's a  photo of the 2 sprues and the hull halves. Do any of the parts look familiar to anyone who's built the Aurora kit? (it's a link rather than an image, to avoid cluttering up the thread)

Anyway, whether it's derived from the Aurora kit or not, it certainly seems like a good kit. The scale is stated as 1/120, which, as the hull is 35.5cm long, means the real ship's hull would be 42m long - is this correct?

I do believe it's the old Aurora kit.  Those hollow stacks of dories don't seem like the sort of thing two independent kit designers would do, and I think I remember the dolphins on the stand.  I'm by no means certain, though.  I'm certainly anxious to be corrected by anybody who has an old Aurora one.

It's been many years since I've seen one, but I'd lay odds that is the Aurora Bluenose. The part breakdown looks very familiar, and that very smooth hull is conspicuously Aurora as well. And then there's that stand with the dolphins. Yup, I'd put money on it alright.

I just checked over on the Hobbycraft website and it is still listed and priced around $30.00. Another fairly simple ship model to cut your teeth on if you’re so inclined. I'd pick one up if I didn't have such a backlog going as it is.

   Not much progress lately but I did finish the dories and put them on the deck.  The basic shape of the Pyro dories look pretty good to me, but I did clean up the insides and add some framing.     I have a follow-up sail question however.  On the Thebaud, the fore staysail has a boom attached to it.  So when the sail is lowered, the boom just falls to the deck?   It's not shown on the plans I have, but in Chapelle's book, he has an illustration of a topping lift on this boom, but without a clear explanation of which era schooners that may have been used on.  I just set the boom in place in the pic below.  So with the sail lowered, should the boom rest on the deck, or should it be hoisted off the deck?  Any advice would be appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Phil

This is indeed a great thread. Good work par429 and Dr.Tilley. Its great to have a student who takes coaching well. This thread could be made into a nice little book.

Fore staysail boom, or club, topping lift.....Thebaud was one of the last fishing schooners built, and one of the last to participate in the schooner races. I believe she was built in 1925, but I may be wrong. I would, if I were building her, include the topping lift. The rigging plan I used to rig the America, did not include a topping lift for the staysail boom. America was built in 1851, and was still around when Thebaud launched. Best guess....somewhere between the 1850's,and the 1900's, the practice concerning staysail booms could have changed, but the possibility exists that it was more preference, than practice. The rigging plan for the Robert McClintock built 1858, shows a staysail topping lift.

OK, well I think that it's pretty much done except for a few small details.  Pyro included some figures and I haven't decided whether to add a couple or not, just to give it some scale.  Here are a few final pics:

I have really enjoyed this project and appreciate all the compliments and assistance, especially Mr. Tilley.  Thanks for all your help.  I learned a lot of new skills (and some new vocabulary) and think I achieved my initial goal of using this as way to learn about ship models.  Not sure what my next ship project should be, but I'll post some pics when I decide.  Thanks again!

A beautiful model of a beautiful ship.  I do hope other newcomers will pay some attention to this thread.  It provides the best example we've seen in this Forum of how to break into the hobby. 

My personal opinion is that figures always add a great deal to a ship model.  I have only the vaguest recollection of what the old Pyro ones look like; if memory serves they aren't bad, though not in the same league as the ones Revell started putting in its 1/96 kits (e.g., the Cutty Sark) a few years later.  (If you can scrounge figures from a Revell Cutty Sark, Thermopylae, Pedro Nunes, Kearsarge, or Alabama, they'll be ideal.  Unfortunately those kits have become rather scarce - and expensive.)  Another source worth checking out is the model railroad department of your hobby shop - if you're lucky enough to have one.  A German company called Preiser makes a superb line of figures on HO scale, many of which can be turned into convincing-looking early-twentieth-century fishermen with minimal effort.  HO scale is 1/87, which obviously is bigger than 1/96.  Preiser figures, however, vary somewhat in stature and build; some of them are just about the right height of 3/4" for a six-foot man.  They are available in two forms:  little boxes of pre-painted figures in groups of five or six, for extravagant prices, and big boxes of eighty or ninety unpainted figures for bargain prices.  Obviously the unpainted ones are the way to go, if you can find them.

I hope you've also given some thought to how you're going to display the model.  It needs to be in a curio cabinet, or in its own display case, or some other permanent form of protection.  The number two enemy of a finished ship model is dust.  (The number one is the species felinus domesticus.)  Your kids and grandkids will thank you for ensuring that the model is in like-new condition when it becomes a family heirloom - which, I suspect, is how your family is already thinking of it.

Phil, this has been a great thread and a great build.  Thanks for sharing.

Paul

Thanks.  Just as a reminder, here are the figures that came with the kit.  They are 3/4" tall, and look rather Naval, but probably could be made to look like fishermen. 

I like the idea of figures also, it gives a sense of the overall size of the ship. 

 

Phil

Phil,

KUDOS to you. The mounting board is beautiful as well. Welcome to the incurable malady of ship building.

Absolutely beautiful work on that schooner!

I just goes to show that with a little TLC a plastic kit can be built into a very respectable model.

Hmmm, I guess jtilley was right after all...

pardon my bumping an old thread but is this kit 1/96 then instead of 1/120? I mean the Pyro/Life-Like fishing schooner

Yes. I wouldn't want to assert positively that it's on precisely 1/96 scale, but I'm pretty sure it was intended to be.

The kit has a rather interesting, and very long, history. It was originally issued by Pyro back in the early or mid-fifties, as a scale model of the fishing schooner Gertrude L. Thebaud. It was, in fact, a copy of the solid-hull wood kit of the same name produced by the now-defunct Marine Models Company. (Pyro was known as "Pirate Plastics" in certain quarters.)

Shortly after its original appearance, Pyro reissued it under the confusing label "American Cup Racer." (Note the careful avoidance of the term "America's Cup." Pyro never claimed such a ship had competed for that trophy - and certainly none ever did.) The kits were, so far as I know, identical except that the new version had vac-formed "billowing sails." (It retained the fishing dories on the deck. A "cup racer" with fishing dories. Yeah, right.)

When Pyro went belly-up the molds wound up with Life-Like, which issued the kit again as an "American Cup Racer." Eventually Lindberg got the molds and issued it as "American Cup Racer" as well. So far as I've been able to tell, it hasn't been sold under its original (and accurate) name, Gertrude L. Thebaud, since the days of Pyro. (I wonder why. Is it maybe because the name "Gertrude" is so unpopular nowadays? When was the last time you heard of a baby girl being named Gertrude? Or Myrtle?)

For the modern modeler the bottom line is that it's a basically sound kit. It's also quite basic and very, very old. (As I remember, the instructions tell the modeler to drill 1/16" holes in the hull for eyebolts.) As this thread shows, the potential is there to produce a beautiful model of a beautiful, important ship type.

My biggest complaint with it is that it doesn't have enough dories. It has four - in two stacks of two each. The real ship probably would have carried ten or twelve, in stacks of five or six. One of the beauties of the dory shape is its ability to be stacked compactly.

I wish Round 2, which apparently has a bunch of old Lindberg/Pyro molds nowadays, would reissue that one.

I hope nobody ever reissues Pyro's other attempt at a fishing schooner: the Elsie from some years later. I know that one only from photos, but the photos make it clear that it was a disaster. It was part of what Olde Phogies like me thought of as Pyro's "dollar series." It featured injection molded sails cast integrally with the gaffs and boom, scarcely any detail, and "dories" that bore no resemblance to the shape of an actual dory. Most awful of all was the gross "wood grain" planking detail on the exterior of the hull. The person responsible for designing the kit apparently had no idea how real wood ships are built. The "planks" in the after part of the hull started at one rail, wrapped almost vertically around the hull, and ended at the other rail. Looked utterly ridiculous. That kit, to my notion, belongs in the collector's market and noplace else.

OK, I've put off doing this kit long enough. Mostly because I know I'd never do half as good a job as Phil. However, I'm now itching to try it. It's such a beautiful ship and I want to attempt to do furled sails in more or less the same manner as Phil did. I've gotten 4 kits on eBay - one unopened, two started and very incomplete, and the oldest - the Pyro kit with the name Gertrude L Thebaud, is complete as far as I've been able to discern so far. I'll have some spare parts and enough dories.

As soon as I'm finished with my 1/48 Fock Wulf F-8 I'll start on Gertrude.

I'm not sure I'll start a WIP but I'll likely have more questions and will probably be in need of some help.

Mike

Mike-

  Excellent, it was a very fun build for me.  I learned a lot of new techniques on this kit!  Good luck with your build!  Feel free to ask any questions, I'll try and help if I can.

 

Reagrds,

Phil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_F6zL3TUdA

More importantly, that would appear to be a set of Blue Jacket drawings of We're Here.

EDIT: Nope!

Do you have that kit? You should build her!

Phil,

I'm delighted that you're still around! I will absolutely take advantage of your memory banks to ask you lots of questions about your build as I begin this fun project. I have so many right now that I'll belay asking them until I'm actually ready to start building since by that time I may have found most of the answers by doing a little reading.

GM,

Those plans were from A. J. Fisher. I bought them a little over two years ago when I thought I'd be starting the build. Obviously I'd changed my mind and built a few other models instead.

Mike

GM, that's a spectacular video. I had no idea it existed. Thanks for the link,

Mike, could you give us an idea of what those Fisher plans are like? I know the company offers a huge line of plans, but I've never seen any of them in the flesh. The sail plan in your picture looks really nice. I gather there are three sheets. Is the name of the draftsman on them? How well does the old Pyro kit match them?

Gloucester schooners make fine model projects. I'm still slogging away on my wood one. Got the hull almost done now. With full retirement three weeks away, I hope to have plenty of modeling time in the near future. 

Have at it. Good luck.

John,

There are 3 sheets. I sincerely hope this is not a copyright infringement - posting small, jpg pictures of those sheets? In any case, here are the other two.

Mike

GM,

Thanks for posting the link to the video. I've had that link saved in my favorites for sometime. It always is a joy ride to be aboard a working schooner - at least in my imagination. Here's another link for anyone interested in more pictures both of Gertrude and of Bluenose:

https://novascotia.ca/archives/Bluenose/archives.asp?ID=74

Mike

P.S. On the right of the picture at the bottom is a link to the same movie clip.

The drawings were made in 1942 by H. W. Potter, according to their titles.