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Author Topic: Pondyacht / 10-Rater  (Read 3798 times)

Daan Makkink

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Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« on: March 09, 2021, 12:10:35 pm »

My name is Daan Makkink from The Netherlands and this is my first trial posting on this great forum.
Early 2019 I spotted a model boat in the window of a charity shop in Ruthin (North Wales). Although the shop was closed and I had to fly back the same evening I persuaded my mother in law to purchase the boat and bring it to her home. Eventually I picked it up by car in May 2019 and brought it to The Netherlands.
The purchase comprised a 1.6m long hull of a model yacht (without rudder, but with deck), a 2.1m long wooden mast and a number of aluminium spars. Fortunately the lead keel was still attached. There was also a handsome stand with it. No deck or mast fittings were present.
After further investigation, the hull is bread-and-butter built with (imho) beautiful lines. Scouring the internet and emailing with some contacts in the UK and doing some calculations based on waterline length, mast-height and jib- and mainboom lengths the boat fits the formula of a 10-Rater. The shape of the hull very much looks like an Alexander of Preston. However, one of the reasons to join this form is to see if I can find more information on the boat.
If I master the technique of uploading postings I will share my most enjoyable path of restoring this boat to sailing conditions and converting it to RC operations. Currently she has completed her first sailing trips, but my sail making skills are not great. I will soon order a set from a proper (model) sailmaker.
Daan. 
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KitS

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #1 on: March 09, 2021, 04:03:02 pm »

Ooooh, 10 Raters, the most elegant of model yachts.  :-))


Your skipper seems to be well pleased with his new vessel anyway.  :-) 
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Kit

Daan Makkink

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #2 on: March 10, 2021, 01:20:35 pm »

Some more pictures in as-found condition.

Still struggling to upload photos>1Mb
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Daan Makkink

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2021, 11:49:29 am »

Next step was to strip the hull from all paint. At this stage I left the deck alone. The deck is not perfect but I like to try and keep it.
I stripped the hull using paint stripper, scrapers and sanding paper. It became clear that the hull was indeed bread-and-butter. Some minor setbacks:
•   Partly iron nails were used to fasten the deck to the hull, these had corroded badly and affected the wood of the hull.
•   At the bow the hull was hollowed out so much at a bad area of wood that there was a hole in the wood. This was filled with some kind of filler on the inside (seems to be from time of construction). To repair this the deck will have to come off.
•   Along either side of the keel some cracks had developed in the hull. Fortunately the hull was still in one piece. To be repaired later.
•   At the stern the wood contained a patch of very raisin rich wood. Did not seem to affect the paint, so left alone.
All in all the hull was still strong with the lead keel firmly attached and no cracks in keel or skeg.

to be continued.
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garethjones35

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2021, 05:12:22 pm »

Hi Daan, 


That's a very nice 10 rater you have to restore.  I have looked through my files and I can't find a drawing or design  that matches it, but I guess it might be an Alexander.  From the shape of the hull and type of rudder skeg I would guess it was intended to be a vane steered model, possibly from the 1940's or 1950's.. Typically 10 Raters from that era are around 1.7-1.8 metres long so yours is unusually short, which might help in identifying the design.  I will make some enquiries within the Vintage Model Yacht Group and see if anyone else can help with identification.  We are currently restoring a couple of 10 Raters for people in the UK, one of a similar age to yours, but somewhat bigger, and also of an unknown design.  This one is also bread and butter construction, but with the slices vertical rather than horizontal.


Regards
Gareth



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Daan Makkink

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #5 on: November 28, 2021, 03:28:27 pm »

Long overdue (work intervened), but still planning to finish the story to date. Don't worry the Waif sails again, but knowing me she will never be fully finished.


Anyway, back tot he storyline. I stripped the hull of paint and the deck of varnish. The hull was in reasonable shape and solid. After sanding the hull back to a smooth finish I put 2 layers of epoxy over it, one thin penetrating resin and then normal layer. I did not use any glass fiber on the outside.


The deck was made from a solid piece of very thin wood, with a hardwood inlay along the center. Shallow grooves filled with black paint gave the impression of a planked deck.


I took all the varnish off with a mix of paint stripper and hard work. The deck was damaged to such an extend that it would never be a show-model. But my aim was to build a well sailing model yacht for use and I liked the idea of keeping the original deck. Then I gave the deck also a layer of penetrating epoxy for protection.
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Daan Makkink

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #6 on: March 10, 2023, 11:11:53 am »

Talk about long overdue. Working 2 years in Taiwan on windfarms kept me pretty busy. The Waif was parked for this period.

Anyway, I thought restoring and improving a model yacht would be an excellent way of spending my recovery time from a small heart surgery early this year. But I will pick-up the story where I left off last time.

As said the hull was cleared from all old paint, keel-bolts replaced by stainless steel items and the inside of the hull was covered with epoxy and glass mats. In some places the hull was very thin and in this way I hoped to increase some strength.
Next step was the construction of a central frame section which could accommodate the sail winches. After experimenting with some options I decided on a loop system below deck, one for the jib and one for the main sail, each operated by its own winch.

The reason for fitting everything below deck is that I want to keep her looks fairly original and also keeping the option open to sail her with either a Braine system or (if I feel very brave) with a windvane system. At the other hand, my aim is still to make a useable yacht which should be fun sailing it. For that purpose a RC system with two sail winches seems best. We will see.

Getting maximum stroke, I opted to attach the bow and stern sheaves of the loops to new frames, installed near the bow and the stern of the hull. Installing the system without the deck is easy, but it is a very tight fit to install when the deck is installed.

To improve access, I have enlarged the deck opening a bit, making a new copper ring similar to the original. I still need my daughter’s thin arm of I have to reach the bow and stern sheaves. In due course I may have to install two deck hatches to improve access.

As the boat had no rudder, I made one myself. After consulting some experts (and scrutinising pictures on internet) on the shape, I made a blade from wood and epoxy. Somebody was able to make a rudderstock from brass on a lath and I attached the blade to the stock with small fingers.


To be continued; Daan
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Daan Makkink

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #7 on: March 10, 2023, 03:44:20 pm »

Another effort to add pictures of the Waif
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Daan Makkink

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #8 on: March 10, 2023, 03:54:36 pm »

Looking at my times of postings (far apart), some may doubt if this boat will ever sail again. Rest assured. Last year I took the Waif back to the UK and visited some model boating lakes in NW UK. Attached two pictures of her sailing in Birkenhead. I used home made sails but since then I have treated myself on a pair of Nylet sails to improve sailing quality and looks. Apart from an ugly fold in the mains, I may have put too much curve in the main. I needed to keep the jib very tight to balance her sailing.


I will try to complete the story of my restoration and sailing with the boat and hoping to hear from others who are embarking on a similar journey.


Daan
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Daan Makkink

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #9 on: March 30, 2023, 11:35:09 am »

Before turning my attention to the rigging, some more words and pictures on the deck. The deck was in poor condition, poorly varnished/stained and held down at the edges with a mahogany strip which had come detached at places. Not a pretty sight.
I carefully prised the deck off the hull. The deck was mainly attached by iron nails and possibly some glue, but came off fairly well. The mahogany edge was beyond salvation.
The deck was a solid plate of 3mm pine with in the middle a 1mm thick and 17mm wide mahogany strip let into the deck. Grooves were scratched in the pine and filled with black paint to give a mock planking impression.
Unfortunately the iron nails had rusted causing damage to the deck edge and top of the hull. Also the deck had some damaged areas / splits near the mast and near the transom.
Despite the damage I opted to retain the deck and restore it. I stripped all the varnish off the deck and I let in pieces of new pine in the damaged areas. Then I applied epoxy with glass matting at the back to regain strength.
I made myself a small tool to restore the grooves in the existing deck and the newly let-in pieces. By carefully going over the groove pattern I managed to make a decent impression of planning again. After a thin coat of epoxy for preservation, I filled all the grooves with black paint again before starting the long process of sanding and varnishing.
I am pleased with the result albeit not perfect. You can still see some of the old damage and where I let in new sections. But for me that is part of the patina of the boat.
I then made a new wooden stopper with a rubber o-ring to try and keep the water out. With help from one of my daughters I engraved name and year of built into the stopper.













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Daan Makkink

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #10 on: March 31, 2023, 09:49:49 am »

The boat came with a 2.1m long pine mast, beautifully shaped (tapered from deck to top and from deck to keel). The only fitting which came with the mast was the brass foot (and fortunately the brass rail inside the hull where the foot fitted into). For the rest it was a bare pole.
A small warning (and by now lesson learnt for me): I may have gone a wee bit overboard in constructing items for the boat. Balancing looks with practical good sailing abilities sometimes ended up in very complex constructions. I would not recommend to follow all my constructions.
After consulting a number of pictures of real size yachts (internet) I decided on a 7/8 fractional rigging with double set of spreaders and a jumper near the top with a pair of diamond jumper stays, all of steel wire. I made a spread-sheet with formulas to check the resulting sail area still fitted the 10R rules.
I started by making a new mast-top out of aluminum tube and t-profile. Happy with the shape, maybe I will replace it with a brass variety in a later stage as the rest of the mast fittings are brass.
As I have no lath and my soldering techniques are not great, I made all spreaders from beech wood, cut open for weight reduction and wrapped in epoxy and glass for strength (see pictures). I glued a short section of brass tube inside the spreaders to which I attached brackets for the shrouds, stays and halyards. Every spreader is fixed to the mast by a single bolt and can be removed for maintenance.
After some trial and errors with rope, I subsequently made the standing rigging of steel wire rope. With the 7/8 rigging and a proper back-stay tensioner I am able to bend the mast and open the main sail in stronger winds.
By now the mast had become an impressive (I think) Christmas tree of shrouds, stays and spreaders. Even with all the stays it remains a fragile part of the boat. To transport the mast I made a wooden box which contains the mast in its finished, fully rigged state.
The boat came with an assortment of booms. As far as I can determine it comprised 2 main booms and 3 jib booms. The booms had most of the rope/chain/bungees attached, but the ropes were cut, so it was not immediately obvious to me how this should work. With help of internet I now understand the rigging, which was intended for Braine steering. I have stored this for future exploration.
Both the main booms had their goose-necks still attached (but no corresponding attachment for the mast). This was relatively easily made from a piece of brass. At the same time I made s brass sleave over the bottom of the mast where she goes through the deck. It gave me a bit more confidence to generate the required strength for all the fittings such as stays, goose neck, boomvang etc. and better protection at deck level
The connection between the jib boom and the deck was less clear. I again reverted to the internet and could determine how the original set-up would have been. A simple hook into a rail on deck provided a (limited) pivoting point for the jib boom. This may be ok for close hauled tacking, but I could not see this work when sailing downwind; the set-up does not allow the boom to swivel to 90 degrees to either board.
On more modern model yachts, I see two distinct different ways of using a jib-boom. The most common way seems to be where both the tack and the clew are attached to the boom. The boom often swivels around a point a bit back from the tack. Advantage is a balanced sail under heel. Small disadvantage I see (but maybe I am wrong) is a constant tension on the foot of the jib on all headings.
Some boats are equipped with a shorter jib boom with its own swivel point, attached to the deck a bit back from the tack. This seems also the set-up on real size boats. In this way the foot of the jib is tightened when the sail is close hauled and loosened when sailing more down wind. I wanted to have both options for my boat.
I made my own design a deck rail for the jib from a square brass tube. I cut a long opening at the top and drilled holes in both sides for weight reduction. At the aft end I made a bit bigger opening so I could slot in a number of different adapters to accommodate all the different ways of rigging the jib. For the short (unbalanced) jib boom I made a new, lighter boom compared to the original. I used one of the booms which came with the boat for the balanced variety, albeit with a new swivel arrangement.
With the new jib-boom, the old main boom looked a bit out of place. Just for the fun I made a new lighter main boom too. It all now looks the par, even with a mix of old and new.
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KitS

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #11 on: March 31, 2023, 12:23:00 pm »

What a wonderful re-build. :-))


There's nothing prettier on the water than a 10 Rater under full sail.
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Kit

Daan Makkink

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #12 on: April 06, 2023, 08:53:16 am »

The Sails
To start I made a set of sails out of strong (wrapping) paper. No panels, just full sheets. I reinforced the edges with cellotape and duck-tape and went for a first sail. This worked remarkably well! The boat did manage to sail both up- and downwind and was listening fairly well to the rudder. Getting used to the remote control was almost more challenging!
I then tried my hand at making my own sails. I bought some light kite material and set to work. Again on internet I saw a number of ways on how to create the curved edges to the panels of the sailcloth. Being a tad stubborn I made a guide from a very slightly bend aluminum rod and cut the panels according to this profile (purely by eye).
I clued the panels together with double sided tape and then tried to sew them together using my mother in law’s sewing machine. Unfortunately the tape was too sticky and the thread would not get through properly. I solved this my applying fairy liquid to the areas to be sewn. This did the trick and I ended up with a full set of curved sails.
I also added a number of pockets for the battens to improve the shape of the leech of the main.
The jib seems to be OK, but the main has an ugly grease in the lower part of the sail. I can’t get this out by playing with Cunningham hole or foot stretcher. An option may be to lengthen the lower batten, but maybe I reduce the mains to act as B or C rig. At the other hand I may have put too much curve in the sail which would make it less suitable for a B- or C-rig.
After some head-scratching I decided to order a set of sails from Nylet. They were very busy, but the sails have arrived and they look great on the boat. Can’t wait till I have a moment to try them out on the water.
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Daan Makkink

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #13 on: April 12, 2023, 12:59:49 pm »

RC
When the deck was off, I installed a frame to hold two sail winches (each laying on their side) with continuous loops running almost the entire length of the hull below deck. Easy to construct with the deck off and my daughter has fine limbs and can just reach the sheaves in bow and stern if anything goes wrong in the future.
[size=78%]Next step was a connection between the sails (booms) and the winch wire.[/size]
As I had a number of lengths of booms I opted for a number of deck-passages (actually OTT, but it seemed a good idea in the beginning). Both for the main and for the jib I made an aluminum frame with red-copper piping to guide the sheets from the deck-passages as far backwards (main) and as far forward (jib) as possible. At deck level, the copper tubes end through a 8mm brass bolt which sticks through the deck. Above deck a brass head nut with a drilled hole holds the aluminum frame and guides the sheet. Both sheeting guides have 2 options for the sheet and the main has two locations for the sheeting frame. This is giving all kind of options for boom lengths and sheeting length.
Below deck I made some protection around he winches by means of aluminum profiles and copper wires to keep the continuous loop and the sheeting apart and this avoid snagging.
For good measures I added a Cunningham hole tensioner and a boom vang, both tensioned via rope/bungee on deck. It is all is a bit OTT, but looks good (in my humble opinion).
I now have a fully working sheeting system with both sails being operated remotely by a winch each. Happy days!
One thing I still have to sort out is the stroke of the jib winch compared to the main winch. The distance between pivoting point and sheet on the jib boom is roughly 2/3 compared to the main boom which means that I have to reduce the length of “throw” of the jib winch. I think with a more fancy R/C equipment one can adjust the throw of the winch. Currently I have restricted the throw of the stick on the sender to avoid the job sheet to be paid out too much.
Again after consulting some examples of pond yachts converted to RC on the internet, I decided to mount the rudder servo below deck with steering lines to the quadrant fitted on the rudder stock. As I was not convinced that this system would have the servo and quadrant move exactly in the same way, I mounted the servo on a sliding rail with springs (see photos). The system works fine and can be easily disconnected whenever I want to try a Braine steering set-up.
I see a lot of RC boats with very big rudders, but I kept mine in keeping with the hull. The boat sails fine and in light winds or slow speed I can slack the jib (separate winch) before tacking. This works fine.
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KitS

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #14 on: April 12, 2023, 02:14:54 pm »

Side mounted winches? Why didn't I think of that too?


Gravity won't be trying to pull the lines off the pulleys if any slack develops.  :-)) :-))
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Kit

Grumpy Dave

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #15 on: October 04, 2023, 10:22:56 pm »

That is a very beautiful boat, you deserve to be very proud of it.
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Geoff

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Re: Pondyacht / 10-Rater
« Reply #16 on: October 17, 2023, 04:16:34 pm »

I just caught this thread and you are to be congratulated, very well done indeed. Its both very interesting and very nice to see an old yacht sailing again. The spirit of the original builder lives on!


Well done


Geoff
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