The British woody

Contrary to popular belief, there was quite a fashion for mahogany lovelies on this side of the pond, too.

Many of the better known boats are Slipper Launches of one kind or another, but there were particular styles which contained as much fine craftsmanship in timber and fittings as a Hacker or a Greavette and that has spawned a few specialists in restoration up and down the country.

Gibbs were builders of some very fine river launches, seen on the Thames and Isis. Some were seen on the Trent or the Severn. Britain doesn’t have that many places for fast runabouts and so the fine launch for day trips and picnics became the thing.

A Gibbs mahogany launch, every bit in the Ditchburn style

Other makers were Taylor’s of Cheshire and Andrews of Bourne End.  Makers of the famous slipper launch, Andrews also made a version with raised aft end and cabin known as day launches. These turn up in some numbers at the Thames Classic Boat Regatta at Henley each year.  A good example is Josephine, now hired out by Freebody at Hurley

Josephine 2. the small fore-cockpit

Josephine 2, an Andrews Day launch

Another style of wooden launch popular in England was the beaver sterned saloon, also a river type.

Diana, a typical British beaver sterned launch wit canopy

On a larger scale is Genevieve, a saloon launch with internal “services”

Saloon launch, with beaver stern, Genevieve

It should be remembered that England does not posess the plethora of lakes for public use that are found in such number in Canada and America and so high speed boats were restricted mainly to inshore and estuarial contests, only a few lakes like Windermere being allowed for high speed use.  Consequently, our sports boats are much smaller, to meet restrictive towing laws and the ever present price of fuel.

Nonetheless, we did have some fine boats like Healey Sportsboats, Fenn and Wood, Tremlett speedboats and a whole range of plywood based outboard sports and speed boats.

Also popular before and just after the War were one design classes of hydroplane racing.

The Darby One Design was designed for use at Oulton Broad, near Lowestoft in Suffolk.  it was also used at Nottingham, no longer a venue.

And the 1 1/2Litre Whippet with any 1500 cc. car based engine was popular for a while.  Indeed, Steve Mills is now building an occasional replica based on plans held at the Pitsea Powerboat Museum, now sadly also lost.

An original Whippet with Meadows engine

A Mills Whippet replica, with Lea Francis engine

Just a selection of typically British boat types which nonetheless show a feel for style and purpose all from wood.  Pretty rich pickings for a modelmaker like me.  There are many boats taken up by modelmakers in the States, but perhaps I should concentrate on the very English kind of boat.

Miss England II

and her driver, Henry O’Neal De Hane Segrave, a true British hero.

Alternative wood

Of course, not all speedboats are made of wood.  One of the most famous boat makes in Britain is the Albatross. A tiny 12′-8″ all aluminium boat with a stunning performance considering the engine was just a little 10HP Ford sidevalve of 1172cc capacity.

Yet these pocket rockets could tow two skiers and maintain a good 35-40mph.

They were made by the craftsmen who built fighters and bombers during the War.  From the very best marine quality aluminium with flush rivetting so good, that it’s difficult to see where the rivets are even after over 50 years.

They were direct drive, no clutch, no gearbox. To go ‘backuds’ you paddled with a tiny oar that came with the boat.  They were delivered on the back of Albatross’s VW flat truck!  12 of the Mk1s were fitted with the fabulous little Coventry Climax FWE engine from the Lotus Elite, but that made the boats dangerous when the spray rails would “knife” a wake of a preceeding boat and turn the craft over in an instant.

I owned Hull No. 137 for a while, but the lack of anywhere to run it free at it’s design speed made me sell it.  But not before measuring and photographing it and making a 1/6th scale model of it, which went to one of Windermere’s richest landowners for his private collection.

The model was made exacltly like the real boats, but was aluminium soldered, not rivetted.  It had a fully detailed Ford sidevalve engine, including SU carburettor and pump, opening engine deck and working steering through cable and pulleys.

All deck fittings were hand carved from aluminium as well.

Albatross Sports No. 137 in 1/6th scale , all aluminium

A Slipper in the Thames

A few years ago I thought it might be nice to do a model of something quintessentially English in the world of wooden boats, so I went to Peter Freebody’s lovely old yard on the Thames at Hurley to measure a Thames Slipper launch.  Imagine my delight when an old boatbuilder gave me a copy of his original table of offsets which he would have used when he built all the very first slipper launches for the now, alas, defunct Andrews of Maidenhead.

The Slipper launch is a very distinctive kind of vessel only seen on the River Thames.  It has straight sections to its frames all the way through and the stern slips away to almost nothing. Indeed the transom block is just a section of oak 8″ square and slightly curved.

The model built perfectly according to the boatbuilder’s offsets except one frame being a scale 1 1/2″ narrow on the starb’d side. When I mentioned it to the chap he said he had to put an inch and a half of wood on every one he built!

I built it from spruce framing and plywood skins, veneered in steamed pear for the scale mahogany look, as I do with all my woodies.  Real mahogany doesn’t look like mahogany on a 1/12th scale model.

In order to make it a quintessentially English boat I also made a model wind up gramophone with a copper horn and silver tea service on a silver tray.

All the deck fittings were made in brass and nickel plated.

A friend ended up buying the model to remind him of his own boat when he travelled around for his work.

Thames Slipper launch in 1/12th scale

From Riva to Record boats

I was asked to produce some models for a restaurant in Washington DC by the architect of the project and chose Miss America X and Baby Horace III.

BHIII was easy enough and fairly simple, but although Miss America’s hull was simple, being a very big Chrs Craft, the interior was quite the reverse.

With no fewer than four Packard 2500M v-12 aero based engines, each with two superchargers, each supercharger with two carburettors and each cylinder with two spark plugs, it was a tour de force of productionising on a small scale.

Miss America X's bow. 1/8th scale. Over 5 ft. long

The engines were firstly made as one pattern, then silicon rubber moulds made of major components and finally they were cast in polyurethane resin.

A busy workbench shewing all four Packard engines as moulded

Aftr painting and detailing with plug leads, pipes and hoses and the carburettors put on the superchargers, this is what the installation looked like. Each engine was well over 8″ long.

Packard engines in Miss America X

Baby Horace III was, by comparison, a simple model with just a fewnice deck fittings to distinguish her.

Baby Horace III in 1/8th scale.

Hello world!

Hello and welcome to the Woody Works, a blog for now, maybe a website later.

I have been around wooden boats for most of my life and have been making models since I was 8 years old.  I always hated building kits, so I have always made models from scratch.

I always try to measure the real thing and then draw it up myself.

I use fine woods to represent mahogany in scale and deck fittings are made from solid brass and plated.

I have made model boats which do not represent wooden ones, too.  Albatross and Delta aluminium speedboats, amongst others.

But my passion has always been for wooden speedboats and racers of the “Golden Era”.

My favourite scales are 1/12th and 1/8th.  And most boats can be modelled very completely at these sizes, with 1/6th scale being reserved for models of very small boats.

This is one of the Riva Aquaramas I made for a client in 1/12th scale. It had working steering from the wheel via tiny universal joints and a worm and wheel gearbox under the dash.

Riva Aquarama Special...1/12th scale

The tiny cocktail cabinet in the seat back hinges and holds glasses hand blown in Venice.

The floor and sun deck coverings were hand painted with the correct multi colour fleck pattern on miniaturists’ fine canvas.  There were over 150 pieces of brass made up into the many plated items, from half round beading to complex vents.  Photo-etching was used to make the name plates.

In the engine compartment, two Big Block Chevies were made from my own patterns so they were identical and the exhaust systems fabricated from brass tube.  Behind the engines a steamed wood storage shelf was made to hold a Riva bucket and tool set all in 1/12th scale.

Riva Aquarama in 1/12th scale from above showing engines