18th Century Longboat - Model Shipways 1:48 - Part 1

Recently I've been working on something a little larger than the 1:1200 ship models I usually build. Model Shipways' 18th Century Longboat is a 1:48 scale plank-on-frame model of the largest ship's boat that would have been carried on a ship of the line in the mid 1700s. It's a great little kit, with laser cut frames and planking in basswood, and various fittings, and I thought it might be interesting to show the steps of construction. It has been a long time since I attempted a model of this sort, and this was a fun foray back into this particular part of the hobby.

This shot is not my own, but shows the contents of the kit. You can see some of the laser cut basswood sheets, and two sheets of rolled up plans.

To begin with, the keel, false keel and stem are glued together - but first the edges of the false keel are sanded so that where it joins the keel there is a groove, into which the ends of the planks will run. (I actually stained these pieces before glueing them, but it was something of a moot point - only about an inch of them stem will be visible when everything is built and painted).

I built myself a crude little jig from some spare wood left over from the laser cut sheets, to help me hold the keel and align the bulkheads as they were glued on. They need to be properly squared against the keel, and the top edges all need to be level. Or at least as level as you can make them. If you mess that up, you just have to compensate with more sanding in later steps.

Here you can see all of the bulkheads have been added to the keel, and the skeleton of the boat, so to speak, is complete. You can see each bulkhead is numbered to make sure it goes in just the right spot.

A top view of the bulkheads.

I glued toothpicks onto the tops of the bulkheads to help keep them steady as I worked on the hull. They are relatively fragile, and can split easily. These bulkheads are laser-cut through most of their length, with the centers only attached on the bottom and the tops of the sides. That way once the model is planked you can remove the centers, leaving a hollow hull.

The bulkheads are all perpendicular to the keel, and the sides of the bulkheads are themselves squared. That means that those edges don't follow the intended contours of the finished hull, and they need to be sanded, or faired, to let the planks lie flat. A lot of sanding ensues.

Here is a close up showing the fairing process under way. you can see on the left of the pictures the edges of the bulkheads have started to take on the proper contours. On the right, the edges have not been touched yet and still show the charring of the laser cutting process.

And that's the first part. Next up, after the fairing is completed, it will be time to begin the planking.