Model Boat Mayhem
The Shipyard ( Dry Dock ): Builds & Questions => Yachts and Sail => Topic started by: John C on September 29, 2008, 12:36:35 pm
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Having made some progress during the summer on my Bawley build, I'm now at the point where I need to make a decision about colour.
I have seen a couple of examples which have been true to the originals (matt black with white gunl's) but find this scheme a bit on the dull side.
Testers Louise Helouise? in pale blue and white on an earlier thread a couple of years ago has always stuck in my mind, so I'm tempted to give my boat a brighter look. At the end of the day it's only myself that has to like it, and have seen some 1:1 bawley restorations on the internet that have made good use of colour. I just wondered what others thought's were?.
Anyway I'll try and attach photo (still getting to grips with Vista)
John C
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A couple more now I know it works.
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This looks like a very nice model.
Is it a kit or from plan?
With ref to the colour. Are you after a scale build. If so then colour might compromise.
Other changes to a more modern colour scheme might include a water line. This drastically slims the boat.
You might like to think about what you would do for colour if you owned a 1:1 version.
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Hi TT
Many thanks for the input.
It's a semi kit, hull and drawings from Mike Mayhew at Waverley models.
I've built it more or less to the drawings supplied apart from an error on my part when planning the deck frame positions (Mike's drawings are just that and do not show any model construction details) which put the cabin about 1/2 inch further forward than I intended.
from a model point of view I want it to look scale on the water, but hope to come up with a somewhat simplified rig to enable it to be dismasted for transport, roughly 50 inches deck to top of mast.
I'm not completely against a mainly black hull ,and have also seen other model bawleys with coloured hulls, although these tended to be built as converted cruisers not working boats, I assume because the well deck limits the usable space inside the hull.
Most often the 1:1 examples I've happened upon have a cream theme, but I'm tempted to go for a two tone cream and a.n.other.
John C
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It looks a lovely model, any photo's of her finished yet. Nice to see a model bawley instead of smacks, I have attached a photo of a Bawley boat my Great Grandfather worked out of Faversham creek in the 1880's I thought it might be of interest to you. I do not know if you know of it but in those early days the Liegh men and the Sheerness men did not get on very well and would deliberately try to cut each others trawls etc beside lobbing coal at each other, that is why my Great Grandfather surprised everyone on the Kent side that when he sold the boat it went to a Leigh man! By the way there was a similar thing that went on with some Sailing Bargemen.
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Hi, I have the model pictured below for restoration. LOA is 36 inches inc. bowsprit. I think she is 1 : 8 scale but am open to correction on this.
The model is by one of our late members and is now in my possession. She won a Society cup and there is lots of character in the finishing touches.
The main colour is black with an ochre colour topsides. The boat has a number FM 7 which suggests Faversham but I do not have any proof that this is an authentic boat.
The table is oak for a colour guide as flash was used. A bit cold for an outside photo.
There are many extra touches from the fish to the fisherman. Also note the propeller on port side. Great for having your lunch on time.
Hope this may help,
Regards Roy
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Here is another view.
Roy
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Nice model, made by some one who understands the boats. I believe Faversham fishing code was FF, but I expect there have been variations over the years. But who knows what the colours were, it was a long time ago and even the Thames barges were painted a variety of colours depending on owners and the individual skipper. I have seen ex-sailing Bawleys fitted with engines doing the same work and they had light grey, a light bluey colour to the plain tarred hull. A very interesting model you have, I hope I see it on the water one day.
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Hi
Thanks for the interest, I'm afraid it's not yet finished I'm a bit of a softy southerner who resides up north these days, and it's a bit cold out in the shed despite the insulation and electric fire.
However the boat is coming on niceley with all the structural work and most of the sails made, but at 1/12 scale is a bit on the large side to rig in my shed so waiting for some milder weather to work outside.
I am helping one of the local kids to build a boat at the moment. He heard that I build model boats and just said that he'd like to have a go, how can you say no when not many kids these days want to build anything. Any way we're going along the Glynn Guest lines as I don't want to put him off with anything too complicated as he's only 12.
I'll try and put some photo's of the bawley up tomorrow, and thanks for posting the photo of your relatives boat, looks typical of the Gravesend bawleys of bawley creek. Shame nobody produces a clinker hull as I think they look much nicer than the carvel ones.
John
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Photos as promised, I think you'll see why I'd rather wait and rig the boat outside the shed rather than in it.
Temporarily attached gaff and sails for the purpose of photo's, they do look a bit on the red side, but the photo's I found of the real thing show red sails.
Nice model Roy, I'm doing without the motor to see how well my model sails at first as I haven't fitted any sail control, I'm hoping that as the rigging runs on horses that I dont need to. But looking at your model I'm a bit concerned that I haven't made the rudder thick enough, it does have quite a chunky stem and I read on another thread about making the rudder the same thickness as the stem or you can lose some control (after I'd made and fitted it of course).
John
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A couple more
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Very nice John.
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Yup very smart, John. One minor point re the sails. If bawleys are similar to Thames barges, the colour of the sails is due to the dressing applied after the sails are made rather than by pre-dying the bolts of canvas. The reason I mention this is because if that is the case, the bolt ropes would have been coloured by the dressing at the same time as the sails. When I made the sails for my Karoline, I dyed the bolt rope cord in the same dye bath as the sail material as I assumed that a fishing boat's sails would have been similarly treated. Indeed I think that barge sails were treated possibly every year. However if your research shows that bawley sails were pre-dyed canvas then please ignore the above comments :-)
As I say, congrats on the restoration. The before and after pictures are very impressive!
Cheers
Guy
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Hi Guy
Would I be right in suspecting that on the real vessel the bolt ropes and the sails could 'take' the colour differently. Or weather differently. Thinking maybe if the sails bleached a bit more then the colour although silmilar would different shades.
And do you get this effect between the different materials you use for sails and bolt rope on your models?
regards
Mark
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Hi Guy
Would I be right in suspecting that on the real vessel the bolt ropes and the sails could 'take' the colour differently. Or weather differently. Thinking maybe if the sails bleached a bit more then the colour although silmilar would different shades.
And do you get this effect between the different materials you use for sails and bolt rope on your models?
regards
Mark
Hi Mark
Yup I'm sure you're right in both instances. Different materials taking the dressing colour to differing degrees and also weathering differently. Thinking about it they probably started different colours too with th sail cloth being white(ish) and the bolt rope presumably being hemp.
Certainly when I dyed the sail materials for Karoline the "blt rope" took the colour slightly differently to the sail cloth.
Cheers
Guy
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Guy
I take on board your comments re the bolt ropes, it's not something I had considered as the material used was washed and dyed in the washing machine before the sails were made up to shrink the material but now it seems obvious...............at least there's visible evidence that I spent hours sewing the blooming things on.
By the way this is a new build not a restoration, Roys boat is a completely different model but I hope he posts pictures when he gets round to the restoration.
Mark
The first batch of sail cloth I dyed turned out pink using the same shade of dye as it was a cotton polyester mix, not only that but darker on one side than the other (I think you can see it chucked in one of the cuboards in the pictures). As a lot of the string / rope we use contains man made fibres, I would definately try a test piece before commiting myself to making up the sails and dyeing them afterwards. This was the first time I bothered to sew on bolt ropes, on a previous model it was just sewn into the hem, and to be honest I'm not sure I would do it again given the extra work involved.
John
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OOOPS! Sorry John. Serves me right for not reading back the thread carefully enough. It's Roycv who has a bawley being restored of course. I remember now that yours was from Mike Mayhew's hull. I know what you mean about properly sewn bolt ropes. Mine took ages. I sometimes thought I was turning into my mother, sitting in front of the TV knitting as I sat sewing bolt ropes all evening. I even took a sail with me when I was working away and could be found sitting in a hotel room busily stitching. Even then I gave up on doing them truly to scale, just catching one strand with each stitch, and oversewed them right round the rope. Plus, given what I said a couple of posts back, I messsed up by not also dying the oversewing thread. I was too far in to change my mind by the time I realised that the thread wasn't going to disappear into the lay of the rope. Hence it's far too visible. See attached pic :((
Cheers
Guy
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Hi Johnc, You might like to look in the current 'Classic Boat' magazine Feb. 2009. This has an article on a Bawley called Vivid owned by an artist and she looks really good. Lots of colour pictures.
regards Roy
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Hi Roy
Classic Boat is a magazine I often browse when I'm in that well known library W.H.Smith, and have bought it in the past when an article catches my eye, so I'll check that out.
My boat is based on the Doris, still afloat last time I Googled for it, but I haven't managed a trip to East Anglia to check it out (not yet anyway).
Guy
Totally agree, it's the most boring thing I've ever done, I also oversewed the the whole rope and still found myself wishing I'd shoved them into the seam as on previous model. Still you have to try these things.
Mike Mayhew did say he could supply a set of sails for around £100, but me being a tight wad made these for about £10, the £100 was starting to sound cheap by the 3rd sail though and still 2 more to make!!
Regards
John
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and still found myself wishing I'd shoved them into the seam as on previous model.
Great tip John :-))
I hadn't thought of that. {-)
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The sails would have been made out of standard canvass cloth like all working sail, which is white in colour. The red colour like the Thames barge and other working coastal craft at the time comes from the sail dressing which is applied wit a bucket and scrubbing brush, the sail being laid out on a large flat area. The mixture is made up with yellow ochre, red ochre, fish oil and salt water(some people even used stale urine!), too much yellow causes a very dark red. In my youth I have made up this mixture and applied it to barge sails and it is a very efficient mix, it makes the sails a bit softer to handle but it does keep out the water. As to bolt rope etc they are liberally coated with Stockholm tar which does give them a very dark brown colour , but the tar does fade and the rope does take on a similar colour to the sails after several coatings of sail dressing. Since the 1970's there has been several ready made alternative dressings which some people used on their privately owned preserved bots because it is not so messy as the original mix. After working sails with the traditional mix, you do tend to get that old time ruddy complexion.
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After spending yesterday at the NE show, it's amazing how the juices get flowing again, and I spent an enjoyable few hours on the rigging of the bawley.
It's not perfect stuff but I'm happy that my home made pulley blocks seem to be up to the task.
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Wideawake
I used to have an old Cornish pilchard driver 27' BP 43' LOA built 1890 re rigged in 1949 as a gaff cutter I had a set of sails made of duradon that were deep brown when new, but faded to almost the exact same shade as the ones in the photo you've posted sort of a pinkie purple (bolt rope) also had one of the old stay sails that had been barked and rubbed with okra that after 30 years was still reddish brown.
Freebooter
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Sorry to keep you all waiting, but I'm not a prolific model maker and the sail making department has been on strike (I cut em she sews em and I sew the bolt ropes on).
The Bawley is ballasted, mostly rigged, and almost ready to get her backside wet, but she does weigh a fair amount (got half a church roof as ballast, but it's all right officer I got it from a policemans wife ......... honest).
Anyway a couple of photo's just to keep the thread going for those that have expressed an interest, don't look for sail control cos there aint any (yet) and had to re-arrange the boat shelf cos the bawley has been living on the floor (drunk again) keep you posted.
John C
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Although not quite finished (are they ever) and with some nagging doubts in my head about rudder and servo size, I bit the bullet today and took myself off to East park.
When I arrived the lake was half empty with quite a lot of weed/rubbish floating about, but decided to sail anyway.
I needn't have worried, everything worked fine and the boat was more responsive than I'd hoped for. Even the parkie stopped cutting the grass to watch.
John C
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Beautiful :-)) :-)) :}
Lovely job John
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Thanks Mark
I'm a lot happier now I've had the boat on the water, gives me the will to get on with the little details like maybe add a crew.
It does seem to me that the bigger boats sail that bit better, but I doubt I would want to go much bigger than this one.
John C
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Some beautiful models, it is giving me the urge to forget powered vessels and make a bawley. Just one thing though I noticed, there are no brails rigged on the mainsail on some models These where a major part of the rig, as on the actual working boats they were used to scandalised the mainsail to regulate your speed(perculiar to bawleys amongst fishing boats) and enable you to work the boiler to cook the shrimps as you caught them.
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The brail is something I'm undecided about adding at the moment. Of the working models I have seen, only one had the brail fitted but it wouldn't be a major job to put one on.
My rigging is a bit unorthodox mainly cos I don't know what I'm doing, but it seemed to work ok, even without sail control I was able to put the boat where I wanted on the pond.
Overall I'm happy with the boat but do intend to add some more details, reg no's navigation boards etc and maybe a flying jib.
John C
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Rigging is often a compromise on a scale sail boat.
If is often not true to prototype and often simplified to make it work.
I am looking at my next build, and my main concern with rigging is to simplify it for speed of rigging/de-rigging waterside. I am not too worried about wandering from the plan.
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Hi, yes I suppose you are right about the rigging, but perhaps you guys can give me a lead as to where I can get my hands on decent plans for a bawley boat, I fancy doing a clicker built one though I thgink the overall shape is the same as a carvel one. By the way I expect you know it but they where called bawley boats locally because they used to cook the shrimps as they caught them , so they were distintive by the steam coming from the cooking pot.
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By the way I expect you know it but they where called bawley boats locally because they used to cook the shrimps as they caught them , so they were distintive by the steam coming from the cooking pot.
I didn't know that. Another interesting anecdote.
Is Bawley a derivation of 'boil'-ey?
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Mark. Sure is
Old Dodes. There are lines for a Harwich Bawley in the book "Inshore craft", small but if you're clever (I'm not) you could enlarge them to a use able size.
I have read that there were lines taken from Doris wich mine is based on, but there are no lines on the drawings I have. Might be worth giving Mike Mayhew a call though.
John C
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Hiya,
pictures and lines for Doris can be found here,
http://www.smackdock.co.uk/old/smacklist/doris/doris.htm
Keith.
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Cheers Kemo for that info, I have downloaded the plans and now looking at them. I shouldn't think there is an awful much difference to the ones on the Kent side.
Many thanks,
David
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Sorry..................been away on family business for a bit.
I don't think there is a lot of difference. From what i've read the clinker built bawleys operated out of Gravesend and the Medway, the Essex coast bawleys were carvel built and bigger to operate further out in the estuary as the stocks declined.
John C
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I know that this topic is a little out of date now - no postings since June last year and it looks as though John C may have 'disappeared' as he was a 'Guest' and is not listed as a member. Can anyone enlighten me as to the length of this Bawley hull as it looks much bigger than the 37" one shown on Waverley Models website which, I am sorry to say, is not very informative about their many hulls, etc. :((
Many thanks.
Derek.
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Hi Guys,
Any suggestions yet, please. {:-{ {:-{
Derek.
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Hi Derek
Been away on hols and so did not see the emails sooner.
I believe JC has contacted you by phone on this one.
But for others interested Hull length is 39" and the bowsprit adds another 19".
Mike Mayhew, the best approach is to ring him for info rather than email.
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Good to see working sail modellers with some excellent boats.
For definitive information about bawleys there is no better book than Smacks & Bawleys by John Leather.
Sails _ bawley sail in trade were never treated but always white and changed every two to three years. The reason they were not couloured is because the sails were hoisted and dropped many times on a working trip and the colour would have covered any of the crew touching them. Barge sails that were permanently attached i.e. Main and for were never really handled as per the mizzen which was furled in a similar way to the main. Other sail ahead of the foresail were left untreted because they were attached and removed by hand when necessary.
Hope that helps
Bob