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[Lothar]

Hello fellow modellers,

first of all I want to introduce myself a little bit:

I am Lothar from Bremen/Germany. My "modelling life" began 38 years ago at the age of 10 with building an easy motorboat from balsa as explained in a book. Over the years I learned to build boats with plank on frames and trained my modelling skills more and more.

At the age of 18 the hobby interests changed to cars...

Well, after marrying my beloved wife Heidi I went back to modelling because a few weeks later I lost the driver's license for a year and my wife told me to do something else than repairing old cars.

I tried life boats and tugs, but changed after a while under the surface with submarines. Subs were a passion to me for more than 20 years and I believe, I made some innovations to this part of the hobby, which made model-subs more reliable than before.


...and now I am back to the roots and started building sail boats. In my opinion the Swedish skerry cruisers are the most elegant small sailboats. They are fast and mostly built from wood. In the last Year I built two of the. The 22 sqm boat Malin, which is my own design after the rules of the class and the 15 sqm Sonja -an Estlander-design from 1928 - are the results until now.

If there is any interest I would post the build of my newest design here. It will be the 15 sqm Svea in scale 1:5. This boat is designed by myself  after the rules of the SSKF in scale of course.

Regards

Lothar

[pugwash]

Lothar welcome to mayhem - though a lot of us on here don't model in wood we enjoy watching a build blog
for a wooden boat so please put your build on the forum.  Especially interesting if it is a type of boat we have
not seen before

Geoff

[rob1962]

Welcome from Scotland, Lothar.
I presume your boats, with a scale of 1:5, are for radio control- please post a few pictures for us, they sound very interesting.
I am in the early stages of my first ever radio control sailboat.

[Netleyned]

Welcome Lothar

We would love to see the build

Geoff (Pugwash)

Did you do any sailing on the RN Windfall yachts back in the sixties?
The Fleet air arm had a couple and General Service had a few more.
These were War reparations from Germany and were Square Metre  Yachts AKA SkerryCruisers
They were quite good seaboats.
I did a lot of seamiles in 'Merlin' a 60 footer.

Ned

[pugwash]

Ned my memory isnt so good but after being introduced to sailing with whalers and some type of dinghy at Ganges
I did a couple of cross channel trips on I think it was called Meon Maid - about 10m sloop belonging to HMS Mercury
after that the only sailing I did was on whatever dinghies we had onboard - usually Mirrors or GP 14.
Never went near a sailing boat till I bought my own Hunter 27 back in 1990 (great wee boat) which we kept at Amble
and sailed up the east coast of Scotland and England.
Finally got a Hunter 32 which we used to take to Holland and finally sailed to Greece.
Got most of my sailing experience doing Yacht deliveries when I retired. Best trip Hawaii to Vancouver in a Luxury 42 ft cat.
Now I'm not safe on a boat because of my arthritis in my hip
Happy days though

Geoff

[Lothar]

Thanks for all Your kind words!

Yes, it will be a wooden boat. it will be a mahagony planked hull with teak-deck. My boats are all radio-controlled. The skerries or squaremeter boats are really fast in real life as in models, but not able to surf.

The picture shows Malin (in front) and Sonja (background at a lake in northern germany.




Tonight I will start with pictures of the design and the building start.

May be I find over here some more friends of scale model yacht.


Regards


Lothar

[Lothar]

So here we are.

about 3 months ago, when Sonja made her maiden voyage I searched for a new challenge. While looking at Sonja I found out, she could be a bit slimmer for a better speed. Also a little less weight could be great. So back to the CAD and working on drawings. The result looked nice to me and the rules.



Another new thing to me will be the whip-mast.

After making drawings of all frames, I started to work on my milling machine. This is really helpfull, because it saves time for the modeller, works more exact than any modeller can cut the frames and it's possible to make very thin frames, which saves a lot of weight. All those frames were glued to the building slip.



Deckstringerslats were glued and than everything needed a bit to be sanded. The keel-slat was made from Mahagony, because this one will be seen, when the boat is painted. Afterwards I started planking.

[Lothar]

The next job was to put the plank on the frames. well, this needs some days and weeks, because I am only able to glue 3 slats on both sides at one evening. One after the job, one after the dinner and one before sleeping. The rest of the time the white glue needs to get dry.



The great deal on this lines is, that I can start planking from the deck and go to the keel without woring on any slat. Only at the ends the have to be adapted to the keel slat. After a while the whole hull was done (puuhhh). So the hull was taken way from the building slip and the feet were cut away from the frames.



The little test sanding was just to see how it comes out. But before I sanded the complete hull, I glued the rest of the planned slats in the frames at Deck-side. Also the reinforcing at the mast-position was fixed.

[Lothar]

Well and than followed the hardest job of all. Sanding the whole hull was quite a good piece of work...... But with different kind of sanding machines it's done in 6 hours or so... The pic shows Svea together with Sonja, to show the difference.



Right after the sanding I put a layer of 168g/m2 Glass with epoxy on the keel. This area has to be as strong as possible, because it's the first part of the boat, which hits the stone at the bottom of the shore.



After filling and priming the keel, It was time to put the first two layers of fine spar varnish on the hull.



We  are comming closer to the point of today...

[Lothar]

So it was time to find out, if my calculations for the weight are correct. I drove to the next lake and made the first swimming test. Everything fitted to my Ideas. the weight of the boat will be at about 11 kg. Not really heavy for a scale sailboat of 1,8 m. But this is one of the great advantages of those "underrigged" squaremeter boats. Big hull, less sails, so the keel can be kept small.



Isn't it a beauty?

So all was OK to put lead into the keel. For this I put the keel into a big bucket filled with water. Now it's time to melt some lead. 5,3 kg were casted into the keel. I do this in parts of about 0,5kg. The hot lead isn't a problem for the wood, because the wood is perfect cooled by the water outside the keel.





That's the point I am today. It all sounds very easy. It is easy, it's just a question of time you invest in the hobby and sometimes hard work.

Actually I built a display stand and I am working on the rudder.

If there are any questions so far, pleas don't hesitate to ask. I like to explain and to communicate.

Regards

Lothar

PS: Did I say, I like this  spell check? It makes my english much better than it is....

[pugwash]

Your english is fine Lothar but your woodworking skills are better.  Like the idea of cooling the keel to cast the lead.
I hope you are leaving it varnished - it would be a shame to cover the wood in paint.
 

Geoff

[destroyer42]

Hi Lothar,
Welcome to Mayhem, Excellent wood working skills and a beautiful yacht.

Regards
Destroyer42

[Lothar]

Thank You all for this great welcome

Seems to me, we will have a great time over here together.

The woodworking skills are nothing special. The milling machine makes the frames, and the planking of such a yacht is not very difficult. This depends on the great lines of the skerries, and those are not innovated by me but by men like Erik Salander, Thore Holm, Gustav Estlander, Nathaniel Heereshof, Knud Reimers or Henry Rasmussen. Those are the guys who made those boats so great to build and nice to sail. I only "adjusted and adopted" their design for my hobby.

Regards

Lothar

[rob1962]

Beautiful boats, Lothar!
By chance, in the harbour here today is a 1938  square metre German boat, "Hildegund", that I have been drooling over. I don't know how much her rebuild cost, but it must have been a small fortune- the hull finish is like glass. I  did not have a camera with me, I'm afraid.

[dreadnought72]

Awesome! The woodwork is beyond lovely.

...I'd never have the guts to pour molten lead into such a work of art... 

Andy

[Lothar]

I did not have a camera with me, I'm afraid.

Some things should be forbidden. I believe to go to the harbour without a camera is something that must be punished

Good luck, I have some pics of those beauties on my computer, but Hildegund would be great....

and Andy....

If You know, that nothing can happen, it's easy. It did this some more times at my subs and sometimes in my planes too. The cooling from outside is the secret.

Back to the building:

I made a rudder from 6 Layers of 1mm plywood. The layers help while profiling the blade. The shaft is 4 mm stainless steel.



Also one of the frames was closed with some 1 mm ply, to protect the servo from water, which will be sometimes in the cockpit.

In the future a cable has to go from the cabin to the stern for the servo. So I built a pipe for the cable into the cockpit. When the side plates of the cockpit are fixed, the pipe is well cached.



Afterwards I build a fastener for the servo and reinforced the slats in the deck, where the  eye-bolts on deck will be mounted later.



So when tommorrow the glue is hardened I can paint the inside of the boat with some epoxyresin to protect it from water forever.

Regards

Lothar

[Lothar]

Hi out there,

before we fall asleep, we go on building, I believe.

I fixed the rods for the servo and the servo itself:




And before closing the deck, I screw two eye-bolts in the frame at the bow. In those eyes later the blocks for the sheet-ropes from the winches.



Afterwards I glued the deck from 1 mm ply with epoxy on the frames. Of course the deck was painted from the bottom side with epoxy too.



That's all for today.

Regards


Lothar

[Lothar]

No,

I didn't fall asleep. There were just to much other important things in my life.

I started planking the deck. The frames around the cabin and the outside of the hull are made from 2 mm mahagoni slats. The deck-planks themselves are teak-slats. I want to try a "real not varnished teak deck". I like this old fashioned style of silver shining decks. Cross Your fingers for me, that it works.




Regards

Lothar

[Lothar]

Well,

it's growing.... This work needs a lot of passion.



I hope to end the aft-deck untill next weekend.

Regards

Lothar

[Lothar]

All Planks on the deck are done.

So it's time to fill the room between the planks. I use Epoxy with colour paste and Microballons for this job. When this is hardened, it's tim to sand again. The sanding of the deck will be no problem, becaus there is now vertikal part of the cabin or the aft hatch mounted till now.



Regards

Lothar

[Lothar]

Hi,

today I sanded th deck. To my surprising this was easier than on the last modells. I do not really know, what has changed. But this all was done after just 50 minutes and looks fine. I hope You like it too.







Now I will order Mahagoni for the cabin. May be I make the mast next.


Lothar

[CF-FZG]

The deck looks fantastic Lothar


Mark

[derekwarner]

Yes Lothar...as others have said  .....the decking is beautiful   & the build lines so sharp & smooth  ...................looking forward to more images of the build.........Derek

[Peter Fitness]

I agree, Lothar, a magnificent model

Peter.

[Lothar]

Hi,

as mentioned before, I decided to build the mast as long as I wait for the delivery of wood for the cabin.

The mast will be made from different slats as shown in the sketch:



Firts of all I had to make some long slats by connecting meter parts. Those are glued and connected by a way, which is called "schäften" in German.
I don't know the right translation for this, but the system is, that the slats are sanded diagonal of about 5 cm on their ends and glued there together. It's the same as used in beams for wooden airplanes. So I was able to make 3m slats. I need the 3 m to keep the mast in position, when it will be shaped and sanded in the oval form.

Then the mast will be bended in it's upper half to get the form of a "whipmast". For this I glue two long slats in the shown template.



So I get something like a "laminated" layer of the mast.



When I have all three layers, they will be glued together. This will be a very stiff construction.

Regards

Lothar