I have received a reply from Russell Potts. He says that because it is a model of a cruising yacht rather than a racing class, it is outside his area of expertise so I am on my own. I am going to defer my decisions on the rig until later and concentrate on the hull for the moment. We are having beautiful weather here so I have taken the workmate outside and have been removing the layers of paint with a hot air gun. It was a smelly, smokey job. I have removed the strip of plumber's solder which was screwed to the lead keel (it wasn't original), then the lead keel and then the rudder. As I said before the hull is carved and hollowed from solid pine. The rudder, keel skeg and deck are all mahogany and the deckhouse, forward hatch, cockpit, rubbing beads and toe boards are teak.
The rudder is in one piece with the wooden stock running in a hole drilled through the hull block and sitting in a hole in the lead keel. The top of the rudder stock which carried the brass tiller has broken away. I have decided to remake the rudder to the same profile but with a brass stock and plywood blade, and fit an Albion Alloy brass tube in the hull. I will make a removeable brass bottom bearing, to fit onto the lead keel so the lead doesn't have to be removed to remove the rudder.
The rubbing beads are 3/16" square rounded to a D section and the toe board is 1/8" X 1/4". They are both badly stained at the fastenings, and at the transom nearly all the rubbing bead has gone, and the toe board which was curved has cracked in the middle so it is now a V. I have tried lightly sanding away the varnish on the rubbing beads to see if I can treat the staining and I have exposed the heads of steel pins. I have checked my collection of wood and have found a piece of teak which my late father-in-law rescued from a skip when they were doing a refurbishment at the Royal Berks Hospital about 40 years ago, so it is probably more than 100 years old. I have decided to replace all the rubbing beads and toe boards.
The deck is 3/16" thick mahogany and has been scored to represent the planking and "caulked" with some white material which has partly crumbled away. I think it may be putty which was also used to form a fillet between the hull and the skeg. I have tried scraping the deck with a cabinet scraper to remove the grimy top layer and when wiped with white spirit the wood looks good. I am thinking about rescoring and inlaying some 1/32" Midwest basswood to represent the caulking. Any advice on how to do this would be welcome. The deck has been fastened (and glued) to the hull with 10 brass screws per side. The screw heads are visible and so I intend to remove them and c/sink them below the surface and fill with the French version of "Plastic Wood".
I plan to saw the coach roof off with a hacksaw blade and make it removeable to give access to the radio gear. It will end up being 2mm lower when I have tidied up the saw marks but I can't see any other way round it.
Bear with me on photos. An update of Windows 7 on my desktop refuses to recognize my camera software, so I have to download onto the laptop which has Windows XP and transfer to the desktop with a memory stick. I have put up with this for a while hoping the software problem will be sorted soon. I will post some photos soon.