Large Scale Modeling





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Colorado trailer plate… Your work? Pretty cool and darned sure eye-catching!

Oh it is not my work. But it is pretty cool. The MC had a band at the clubhouse last night in Florence and all kinds of people showed up.

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In the large scale department here is the schooner Tivoli my father and I built some 35 years ago at a shopping center. The lines are loosely based on a clipper bow Gloucester Fishing Schooner with some simplification to make it faster and easier to build . The hull was framed and timbered in Douglas fir and sheathed with CDX ply . Planking is Red Cedar but not true to prototypical practice in that the edges are parallel. My dad and I along with some helpers built the hull , deck and deckhouses and bowsprit.
The hull is nowhere near the structure of the real thing but the spars and rigging are 100% authentic and could be used on a large sailing vessel.
The spars and rigging were all done by the late Nick Benton , owner of The Rigging Gang in Rhode Island . Nick was a master rigger - one of the last able to produce this kind of work and he was an absolutely wonderful guy and a pleasure to work with . Shortly after completion of this project he sadly fell to his death while working high aloft on a sailing vessel leaving a wife and young children and also leaving the large sailing vessel world with one less artisan .
I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to do a project like this alongside my father and also Nick .Both my father and grandfather were master wooden boat builders and loftsmen.

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The shopping center was eventually sold to new owners and the spars and rigging fell into neglect and had to be removed for safety reasons.

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I am driving right now so prudence dictates that I not type a lot. But that is absolutely fantastic!

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Found a couple more pics - sadly this was in the time before cellphone cameras . Somewhere I have pictures but I don’t know where. Anyway, those previously posted and these were found on the internet. I don’t know what the protocol is for watermark pics is but one of these is - credit due to source and picture is posted for discussion purposes only.


Seeing this detail reminded me that we did taper the planks a bit where they meet the stem .

The above picture illustrates the maintenance needed but sadly not given in later years - the shrouds have gone slack to the point where even the lantern boards are inducing twist . A shame really.

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