Classic Pond Yachts
I bought this Half Marblehead from Beale Park, it has suffered as a big lump of barn roof had fell on it breaking the mast !!
This is the only picture I have of when I bought her, the mast was broken, also the vane steering gear. I removed all the deck gear and cleaned her up. The half Marblehead was an idea of Vic Smeed, he thought it would be a good class for juniors. He designed a Sea Urchin which was hard chine, and the Water Baby which was a round bilge design. Both boats are now built by Grove Pond Yachts as their MM class, beautifully built models, much better quality that the ones built in the day! a really good web site -
http://www.grovepondyachts.com/
Well worth a visit.
Picture above left looking forward, the one on the right looking aft. The boat is a little overweight, but not enough to take the deck off and start again !!
Nigel Brown from Cat Sails also bought a Half Marblehead from Beale Park, but he had no rigs etc, so bought a drawing from Marine Models, on the drawing were the drawings for the vane gear, so the first job was to make two!
The first job was to make two quadrants.
This is the lower assembly, the quadrant fits on the shaft with the tiller, the top part has pins to locate in the quadrant, you just lift it and turn, one pin is for beating and reaching with the wind on or forward of the beam, the other pin for running and reaching.
Both systems nearly finished, good silver soldering practice! more pictures below.
It will be interesting to see how they work, both built as per Vic Smeed's drawing.
The deck hatch was just a hole in the deck with only the thickness of the ply to try and seal the hatch, I fitted a frame around the hatch to give something to seal the hatch against.
I bought some cork tiles 10mm thick adhesive backed, I set the saw bench to 3 degrees and slowly bought the cork to size.
I decided to fit a carbon mast in the boat, after all it is a Marblehead, but the woven carbon finish was a bit out of place, so I painted it the same colour as the hull.
The Carbon mast is slightly bigger than the alloy mast fitted, so I had to machine up a brass sleeve for the deck slide to take the new mast, and silver solder it to the slider.
I had to mill out the opening in the mast slide to take the bigger mast tube.
New mast in modified mast slide, I also made new main sheet and Jib tracks. See original deck hatch glued to cork tile. The timber in the center is to fit an elastic hold down.
The tracks were made out of bent brass wire glued into the deck, washers also glued to the deck to finish, I fitted short brass tubes, superglued in position as stops, the sliders made out of hexagon brass, with two holes drilled, a bent piece of brass wire silver soldered in place, they run really freely.
This is a really good way to buy brass hex bar, tapped and with threaded ends, they are for mounting printed circuit boards, they come in useful all the time, you can even make rigging screws out of them, and they are very cheap from Amazon and Ebay.
Making a new forestay fitting from a piece of brass angle.
So this is where I am with her, the hull has had its first coat of paint, one more to go, using the Humbrol enamel, it covers really well, goes off to a fantastic finish and as hard as hard! Next I have to make the rudder, and figure out how I am going to make a gooseneck fitting, and make some temporary sails, until Catsails have time to make me proper ones.
22 Feb 21 - Re-marking main and jib boom calibration marks, ready for varnish.
Could not resist taking a few more pictures with the vane on, she needs a new stand !!