Classic Pond Yachts
'Dolly' not sure what this boat is, other than a very unusual, and a very pretty boat! She is not finished yet, but regular uploads will keep this page up to date, I tend to work on two or three boats at a time!
I bought this boat on an internet auction being held at Raleigh in Essex, due to Covid, I drove up to Essex picked up the boat and drove home. She is called Dolly as she is old, and boats should have names! she had no name on her when I bought her so she is now called Dolly !
We have little, well no idea of what this boat is, she is 48 inches long and 8 1/2 inch beam, so too short to be a Marblehead, we thought maybe she was a 5 rater, I have now finished the hull to where I could float test it, she has a waterline length or around 36 inches, so she would never carry enough sail to be a 5 rater.
The keel is made of brass, once I got the keel off the boat it is an intricate casting, the wooden fin is hollow and has a lead insert that fits inside, the fin has also been drilled out and a lead block inserted, so a lot of time/work went into the keel, why do all that and not just make a lead bulb, cost?? an interesting boat. I have not seen anything like her, the shear is to my eye quiet old, but she has a scow type bow, with the maximum beam fairly well forward, could she have been built to race in the overall length races I have heard about, is that why she is 4 ft long? any information would be gratefully received!
The picture on the left is looking aft inside the hull, you can see the rudder tube, deck beams and deck, the hull has been carved out of what looks like yellow pine in two halves there is a join along the centre line, the deck has been made out of a single piece of yellow pine 3mm thick, in my view all done to a good quality, who ever built her knew what they were doing.
The picture on the right is inside the hull looking forward, the wires are to take the shrouds, they go through brass deck fittings and have an eye twisted above deck level to take small brass eyes, see picture above. The corroded looking brass fixings are screws holding the keel deadwood and skeg to the hull, they had to stay as no access, but are sound. I can get to the screws holding the wires for the shrouds, the wires are now brittle, not sure what the wire was, but it snapped at deck level while being removed. Rigging base system under review!!
Deck fittings removed, I managed to remove the timber trims around the deck edge so they could be saved, they needed stripping, repairing and re-varnishing, the deck hatch is way off the centre line, one plank difference port and stb, the oval hatch coaming was to far gone to save.
The deck has been stripped of varnish, there were a few splits in the timber, here gluing thin pine veneer into the splits with epoxy.
The pictures below show the keel arrangement, to get the keel out of the boat I had to make up a hole saw out of a stainless tube, bored out to slide over the keel bolts, then file teeth into the end of the tube, slowly drill down over the tube, removing and re-sharpen the teeth, until the keel comes free. A surprise to find that there was a lead insert in the keel, also you can see what appears to be a round rebate in the bottom of the timber fin near the front, this is a hole drilled down the forward side of the keel with lead inserted there is also a hole drilled into the top of the fin with lead in, the builder went to a lot of trouble, the only reason brass would have been used is if/when lead was very expensive, or unobtainable maybe between the wars??
The keel bolts were tapped into the brass, and were corroded solid, no amount of heat with penetrating oil would let them move, so I took the angles, set up the keel in a cradle, and drilled them out of the keel. The new keel bolts are stainless, I machined up a couple of threaded countersink tapers, cut countersinks into the bottom of the keel where the holes exit to allow the keel bolts to pull in tight. I had also machine polished the brass bulb, if you have a brass keel, flaunt it!
If I am honest from the moment I picked up the boat from Essex, I wondered what I had bought and why, I was peering at it suspiciously in the rear view mirror all the way home ! it was at this point, when the deck varnish was removed to show the yellow pine deck, and once the paint from the hull was removed, I started to realise that this is a very good looking model yacht. The hull had been beautifully carved from solid pine, in two halves and glued together along the centreline.
Where the hatch was off centre, I marked out a new oval hatch shape on the centreline, keeping it as small as possible.
Hull and deck sealed with two pack poly varnish, I used two pack as I was concerned about the hull to deck joint, it was too good to try removing the deck, but I was worried it could leak, so I used two pack to try and seal/glue the joints, the first coat went on with a hair dryer to thin the varnish so it would creep into any cracks, then sanded back and another couple of coats. Next step to sand back deck varnish ready for deck lining.
The first time I ever lined a deck was with my Lady Betty model, by now I had realised that using a Bic Biro was not the thing! a friend of mine told me to use india ink, so after much searching online I bought some 0.3mm wide india ink pens by Faber Castell. But I had never done the dagger tooth lining before, so I cut out paper and stuck it to the deck, after a couple of false starts I worked out how to do it, and drew out the deck lines on paper, so I could refer to it as I did the real thing.
First job was to find the centreline, using the lining tool, I put masking tape along the centre of the deck and marked off where the tool thought the centre of the deck was, and struck a line down the centre, I then measured off how wide I wanted the king plank to be, and drew in the king plank. I then drew the margin board around the deck edge and the border around the deck hatch.
My first attempt went wrong, I did wonder whether to carry on with two pack varnish after the base coats but what I did not think about, and should have, was the two pack reacted with the ink !! Had a beer, and a cry, and sanded it all off, three days later ready for round two.
Drawing out the deck lining, with the tool, the paper template did make it a lot easier! The tool was a home made affair, adequate at best, I have now bought a new tool, and made some mods so it works better, I will put a page on this site showing what the mods were.
The picture below on the left is the dagger tooth detail being masked off, After having to sand off the deck after the false start, I varnished the deck with single pack varnish, then sanded it down ready to line, I decided to spray the dagger tooth detail in black, the original colour, I did some tests to make sure the spray enamel did not react with the varnish!!
Boat fully masked and the dagger tooth detail being sprayed with a can of black enamel. This picture really shows how far forward the maximum beam is.
These pictures show the dagger tooth deck painted, ready for a light sand over and more varnish, I used satin varnish to finish the deck, no yet done here, in the back of the picture on the left is Lady Betty, I re lined the deck on her at the same time, as the biro had all but disappeared!! and we were due to attend a VMYG meeting at Hampton Court. In the far corner is the cats bed, he has been made to sleep in the garage after bringing in one mouse to many, so both of us live in the garage!
The keel is a problem, the way it is assembled with a hollow timber fin, a lead insert and a brass bulb with a recess, the keel is going to fill with water, I could fill it with silicon, not nice ! and probably would not work, it would only trap water and not allow it to dry out, there had been several goes with screws holding the timber fin to the boat, so I decided to make up a mahogany strap, shaped it to fit inside the hull, and epoxied the mahogany to the bottom of the boat, then put screws through the bottom into the timber fin and epoxied that to the bottom of the hull. I machined up two Tufnell upstands approx 30mm diameter, and they were epoxied to the Mahogany strap for the keel bolts to pass through, in the top of the Tufnell cylinders I put a countersink, the idea being when the keel is fitted, a rubber grommet goes over each keel bolt, and a penny washer over the top, then the keel is bolted in place, I am using eye nuts to start with as I can tie a line to them for use as a handle. I am thinking I will fit radio to this boat, the tops of the Tufnell cylinders will be perfect to fit a servo tray. The picture of the keel fitted is only a dry fit not bolted up, no gaps when bolted up!!
Whilst working on Dolly I always felt the skeg was very small, which would mean the rudder would be small, the skeg also lacked any ? style to its design, I decided to make the skeg a little larger, and a prettier shape, it will also mean if I fit radio, I won't have to fit some horrible modern type rudder to steer her, I think she looks a lot better for the mod. It is difficult to know what to do in these situations, if she was from a well known designer, and had a glorious history of cup wins, I would not do it, probably would not have to, as she will have been well designed. But in this situation, where we have no idea where she came from, I feel it acceptable to make a few small alterations.
In the picture above right you can see a small fitting just under the transom, it is a small brass through hull fitting, it must be a drain to let water out, I will fit a small bung as flush as possible, she will have needed this with the open rigging bases!!
Hull being painted, using International Toplac, it is coming on nicely, getting close to where we are now, next job to mark out the waterline and paint a green boot top. I have had issues in the past with Toplac not going hard, I really mixed the paint in the tin for some time, before using it, this time it has gone hard.
This is turning into something really special. I now have to start making some deck gear, hatch etc.
The pictures above and below show the hatch frame being made, starting with a flat sheet of brass, fret saw out the frame, then form the upstand into the correct shape, and cut to length, not as easy as it sounds, also the deck has a camber so the brass frame has to fit around the upstand and take up the shape of the deck, once your happy with the shape and positioning of the frame, keep your fingers crossed and silver solder the upstand to the frame, also silver solder the but joint of the upstand -simples!! I had been putting off this job as I was not sure I could do it, I think to date this simple hatch has given me the most pleasure when I look at it!!
Here is the finished hatch dry fitted to the deck, I made on Oval top out of the timber left over from our bannisters, gloss varnished, I will knock that back flat and paint her name onto the hatch, then finish with another few coats of gloss varnish, I got some 10mm cork tiles, carefully cut out to fit the hatch, then disc sanded on a taper, they are self adhesive, I have done a test onto some varnished wood and they seem to stick well, I will cut a hole in the centre and glue in a piece of timber to take an eye for a length of bungy to hold the hatch closed while sailing.
The picture on the right shows the original timbers around the shear, salvaged from when I took her apart, repaired, re-varnished, warts and all, stuck in place with tape to see how she will look.
So we have a nice boat but don't know how old it is, but I suspect pre WWII we don't know what if any rating rule she was built to, and we don't know what sort of rig she had? She came with a mast for a Bermudan rig, and a main boom, that stopped short of the mainsheet track by over 4 inches, she had what appears to be the remains of a bowsprit, so what sort of rig do I make for her ? I have done some drawings to work out centre of efforts, I have found out where the CLR of the hull is, the choice is Bermudan or Gaff ?
This will get you in the ballpark for finding where the CLR of the hull is, this is the point where if you pushed the side of the boat with your finger, she would move sideways, for interest when I did the float test in the bath, when I pushed in the position this system told me to push, she went sideways!! Print a picture of the boat, stick it to a piece of card, cut out the underwater shape, I include the rudder, some don't, and find the balance point I used a pen! = CLR = Centre of lateral resistance.
I think it is most likely the boat had a Bermudan rig, and I think she probably had a short bowsprit. But I think I may go for a higher aspect ratio mainsail, leave the jib as drawn here. But she won't be a powerful boat, so can't go to tall!
This is where I currently am, I will up date regularly as the boat has more work done. Next jobs are to, mark out and paint waterline, start to make deck fittings, I have cleaned up and can usesome of the original fittings, start to make the mast and spars.