(Click here for Progress photos) *Model Building Photos
“Why don’t you build it yourself?” That’s how it started. But first, a little historical background might be helpful here.
I’ve always loved boats and being on the water. I guess it came natural. I was born and spent my early childhood in Minnesota-- “the land of ten thousand lakes.” Learning to row was a great thrill for me. Being taken to the speed boat races by my dad was equally thrilling, and watching the unlimited class hydroplanes with their huge airplane engines race on the Detroit River is still a vivid memory for me.
And, I’ve always had a penchant for building things. I built shacks and tree houses for my friends and me to play in. I built model airplanes to fly and hang from the ceiling of my bedroom. So it was natural for me to build my first “boat.”
After gathering some boards and scrounging some nails, two fifty-gallon drums and some rope, two of my friends and I built what we hoped would get us across the back-bay which stretched from Superior Wisconsin to Duluth Minnesota—a distance of about two miles.
At ten years old you don’t understand the laws of physics, gravity, or what balance and ballast, or counter weights are, or what happens when you don’t understand.
So of course being the builder, I was the captain. As the captain, my job was to also be the test-pilot. The boat was a miserable failure. Leaping onto the high-riding box and lashed barrels, the boat flipped, catapulted me into the cold water and immediately drifted out away from shore beyond our reach. Fortunate for us all, or we could have become statistics.
Undaunted, a few days later we went for another barrel, cut a large section out of the side of it with a pair of my dad’s tin-snips and again went to the bay to launch what was now going to be a one-man vessel. After placing the barrel in the water, both of my friends held it steady as I climbed in with a board for a paddle. They shoved as they let go their hold, the barrel rolled over dumping me into the water.
So much for junior boat building. Two failures within two weeks was enough for us to retire from such further enterprise. You do get the idea however. Then a summer job when I was a thirteen-year-old, working on a floating general store euphemistically dubbed “Bum-Boats” by the sailors aboard their iron ore boats which plied the Great Lakes, cemented my love for the open water, boats and ships.
The love of being on the water has never left me. While aboard ship during my short tour in the U.S. Navy, I spent many nights alone topside near the bow watching the waves churn white with foam, and the wind blowing in my face.
Now fast forward to my building a 13-foot outboard runabout, then a class “B” racing outboard boat, which I flipped in every race I was ever in, the remodeling of a 32-foot cabin cruiser, then switching to sail with first a 20-foot sloop, then a 28-footer, on to a 36-footer and finally a 50-foot sloop, and you have the full picture of my love of the sea and all things that float, unless you include the fact that we now belong to a commercial yacht club that allows us to rent a boat of our choice when the thought strikes our fancy.
So what has this to do with building America?
Well, I’ve always wanted to own a boat model that I could look at in my home. Something that would remind me of past adventures. Racing sailboats is an experience that defies description unless you’ve had the opportunity to participate. It’s often stated that if two sailboats are within sight of each other, there’s a race. And it’s true. Memories of those races make a sailor’s blood rush. Having a boat model would help give me that rush.
Match racing, is the epitome of high action on the open seas. The concept of this type of race was launched after the first challenge was accepted, in 1851 by the owners and crew of the sloop America. They brought the silver cup home from England as victors in a race against 16 of England’s finest sailing vessels of the day. America, the sloop, was a break-through design with innovations that only the entrepreneurial spirit and audacity of the men of the new world could conjure. America the sloop was a winner in every sense of the word.
What better boat model to own than America? Now we’ve reached the beginning of this tale.
On a Sunday afternoon a few years back, my wife Diana and I were showing
our two out of town friends the Hotel Del Coronado. Walking through the building and looking at the historical pictures on the walls and window displays, we first viewed and then walked into a store full of marine artifacts and boat models. While I was oooing and aaahing at the boat models, Diana was looking at the price tags---she’s the frugal one of the family.
Prices on these models varied from a low of around $400 dollars to a high of $3,000. Most of the models were of ships that were beautiful but not what I wanted to have on display. Then I spotted the finished model of America with a very high price tag attached. As I was salivating, Diana issued her challenge----“why don’t you build it yourself?”
With Diana’s words lingering in my ears, I approached the owner of the store, asked where I could get a model of the America to build, was given a name and web page address, and my challenge began—the building of America.
The $89 dollar model kit, along with the additional $19.00 paint package arrived in mid-April 2001. Upon opening and reviewing the contents, which included four sheets of plans and a parts book in five languages, it was readily apparent that I would need some tools beyond what I currently possessed, and those normally found in Home Depot.
A brief search of the Yellow Pages provided several hobby store listings, most with disconnected phones. After finding a store still in business not too far from home, I made the trip and acquired some miniature essentials—miter box and saw, “C” clamps, set of tweezers, model glue, a mini hammer for the mini nails, an Exacto-knife, and the discovery that wooden model boat building was back-burner stuff in today’s world. Trains, planes and cars, all motorized and most of them remote controlled are the “in” hobbies of today. Much later, (about eighteen months) I found that there is only one small wooden boat model and parts store in all of Los Angeles and San Diego counties, it being a sub-leased store within a store, tucked in a back corner occupying a six-by-eight foot of space! This hobby is dying, no doubt of it.
“Laser cut parts” meant something different to the manufacturer, than to me, the novice boat model builder. Laser scored parts, would have been the appropriate description. Every piece for the construction of the hull, other than the deck and hull planking, required careful, painstaking cutting of the micro-thin plywood material, and the need of another tool acquisition—a power jig-saw. And of course, how can you build a model without the use of a power Dremel set?
It soon became very evident that the cost of the model kit would be far outstripped by the ultimate cost of obtaining the necessary tools to build America.
A larger flat-topped workbench in our space-challenged garage was a must. This required several trips to Home Depot for piano hinges, screws and a power screwdriver to construct two drop-leaf bench extensions, which I could work on and then fold away so the cars could be parked in their spaces and still close the garage door. My bench vise was much too large to use for the mini parts, so this required the purchase of a mini vise. This kind of need to expand my tool components continued throughout the building process, most often to the astonishment of my other half, which led to her declaration that she wants as many tools in the kitchen as I have in the garage. A fair and equitable arrangement we are now working toward.
Back to building America. A meticulous walk through the five-language parts/instruction book with its 160 named and 1,235 individual parts that included three different sized spools of heavy twine and 700 brass nails, gave me an idea of the complexity of that simple statement, “why don’t you build it yourself?” Further examination of the 37 operations and 48 steps outlined for building the model added to the daunting task.
After reading operation 37 entitled “Assembling the masts, attachments and spars” which included cutting and sewing the sails and rigging all lines, halyards and running sheets, I decided their would be a definite time lag between construction of the boat and rigging it. This operation was described with the casual statement, “We suggest you follow the steps indicated in each stage of the masts and spars plan.” In my view, the most difficult and time-consuming operation was relegated to one small paragraph, while building the boat had fairly good instructional steps to follow. Clearly, anyone without firsthand knowledge of the basic fundamentals of sailboats and rigging would be in deep trouble. I had the feeling I was in trouble and I’ve been sailing for over 30 years!
The middle of June 2001 was the start of the building project. My first step was my best. I closed the cover on the box of parts and materials, keeping the plans and parts/instruction out, and spent the next week reading plans and the instruction book in the evening, building the hull in my mind, while following the drawings and instructions. Here I should mention that anyone not familiar with following construction plans to build a structure of any kind would be hard pressed to complete the task without great difficulty.
Other than the time and patience it took putting all the pieces in place, nailing each individual hull plank (strakes) with the smallest nails and hammer I’ve ever used, (bending more than I should have) and gluing each individual deck plank in place, the construction went well, consuming a little over 150 hours of time over a period of about five months. Most of the effort was enjoyable, some of it frustrating, but taking step-by-step pictures of the progress kept me motivated and moving ahead with the project.
Several more hours were expended mounting and fitting the rudder, bowsprit and windless assemblies. By year end, the part I was confident in getting finished, the hull, was completed with masts and booms cut and shaped to size. But not without several frustrating experiences of discovering missing parts that I had to manufacture, and some conflicting instructions on the order of placing some parts, causing some rip-out and reconstruction.
It was time to put the project aside while I built up the courage to attack what I truly felt would be the most difficult. Rigging, cutting, sewing and shaping sails. I had never used a sewing machine, and attempting to insert micro sized lines through mini-micro sized block and tackle assemblies was just too extreme for me to begin the process.
The Final Phase
Almost a year past before I had the courage, and felt I could concentrate on the task of rigging the boat. During that time, I was chided by you know who, reminding me she had read that more than 90 percent of all such models started were never completed.
November of 2002 provided me a window of time to continue. My business had slowed and I felt I was ready to take on the final part of the challenge of building America.
An accidental destruction of a couple of blocks while trying to increase the hole-size to construct block and tackle assemblies and some missing parts, forced me to locate and seek the advice of the owner/operator of the small and only wooden boat model store within Los Angeles and San Diego Counties. Fortunately, he operates in San Diego, 20 miles from my North County home.
The short meeting and discussion with the storeowner and his advice on how to thread the mini lines through the mini holes proved to be fortuitous and turned out to be invaluable. “I use wax or white glue on the thread ends to help get them through the small holes,” he offered. Now why hadn’t I thought of that?
My confidence restored, I was able to replace the missing blocks by making one of the smallest purchases to date, a small package of chain plate blocks at a cost of $2.95, returned home and attacked the project with new found gusto and confidence.
Diana instructed me on the use of her sewing machine. I cut and sewed the sails, threaded and sewed the reefing lines onto the sails and rigged the boat over the next two months using up approximately another 73 hours and continuing the step-by-step progress photos during the process. A total of 223 hours of my focused effort produced the model boat I’ve always wanted, completing it on December 30 th 2002. The satisfaction of having built the boat rather than purchasing it completed, adds to my enjoyment.
Diana knew what she was doing with her challenge. What she wasn’t prepared for was the additional cost of acquiring all those necessary tools. She now estimates that should we add up the cost, it may well exceed what the completed boat purchase would have been.
Now I’m on a quest to research and document all I can find on the America, her builders, owners and crew. I plan to add what I find to the display that now rests comfortably in my home office.
The history of America, the boat, is analogous to the history of America itself. Bold, brash, audacious and entrepreneurial, she epitomizes the free thought and spirit born of a free people, and the accomplishments that freedom creates when allowed to grow and flourish.
Building America the boat, may be a continuing process for many years. I have recently found some interesting rigging facts from some of my research that suggests I must manufacture some more parts and rigging that the model manufacturers may not have been aware of. A little tinkering here and there, adding a few things to the America also follows our country’s history. The foundation for our government, the Constitution is read and reread, reinterpreted and tweaked, to adjust with the times. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean gave America’s crew time to adjust its rigging for better performance, increasing their chances of winning, much like our Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution.
Winning is synonymous with America. And, without question, building America will be a continuing process.
©2003 Bill Effinger
I welcome your comments
You can reach me at bill@billeffinger.com