Cork boats for weddings

One of my friends says that my life seems a bit "random" sometimes. She's right. A few months ago, I received a request for some cork boats for a wedding.

After a little e-mail discussion, I  found myself having agreed to make up some for Matt Cox and his bride to bes nuptials. They were to be used as table decoration, sailing in goldfish bowls on the tables.

Matt had spotted my posts about the Cokyn-Baba boats we tried a couple of years ago at the boat club. The wedding was to have a nautical theme and so I was the man to decorate the tables!

Anyway, he required 8 boats so I set about acquiring materials. The hulls are cork sanding blocks cut in half and shaped by hand using a surform. Beware if you try this, not all blocks are the same. Cheapo ones from Wilkinson are less dense than pricier versions from a proper hardware shop.

The original sails were from very thin plywood, supplied cut ready to use by a gentleman who wrote the models up in Marine Modelling magazine. I didn't have and couldn't find such thin and stiff wood so 30 thou plasticard was substituted. It has the advantage of not needing painting. The sail sizes were taken from my original boat but I rounded off the corners a bit as there would be children and drunk adults poking these things and at the time of manufacture, one council had deiced that triangular flapjacks were a potential deathtrap, so I thought "better safe than sorry".

The keels had also been supplied in the past but I made my own from a bit of sheet steel in the garage. Some aviation snips and a bit of filing did the job followed by a coat of Smoothright so they matched the sails.

All done, the boats were passed to a relative who was going to the event. Admittedly I interrupted a game of petanque to do this but it was cheaper and easier than posting. A few weeks later, I received some photos showing the boats in use. Apparently they went down very well. In fact one of them was purloined, so who knows where it has ended up?

Painting wood and cork

Painted cork boat
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker

Untreated cork and wood will soak up paint like crazy. The wood will also acquire a furry surface which isn't very nice - and no use to me as a sail !

Two coats of sanding sealer sorted all this out. Thanks to the warm day coat number 1 dried almost instantly and I was quickly sanding it back for the second Go. I'm not sure the cork wouldn't have benefited from more coats than this but decided I'd let the paint do the rest of the sealing.

The orange is Humbrol gloss and the whites Humbrol matt. A couple of coats of each sanded back between each. Mind you, this didn't make a huge amount of difference, the cork is still pretty lumpy. Still, it won't matter once the boat is on the water.

The lines are applied with a bow pen compass as an experiment. The sharp end has been reversed and the now blunt bit runs along the deck. While this worked OK, I think I need to look for a better bit of kit as the pen end isn't particularly good. At least I get to find this out on something relatively unimportant than a prize model locomotive !

Unpainted boat

Unpainted boat
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker

Cutting a cork blog isn't difficult, a razor saw does this very nicely, shaping the result is harder. You can't carve cork in the same way you can a lump of real wood. While the saw helps, I found sawing at the block with a cheap "snap-off" knife with the blade fully extended. This leaves a smooth surface. Think carving the Sunday joint and you get both the methods and an idea of how the waste material comes off. Please don't try slices of cork with Yorkshire pudding though, it's not nutritious and quite chewy.

There's something perverse about sanding a sanding block too. Surprisingly coarse sandpaper works well, the fine stuff doesn't make much of an impression. I didn't go mad on this as this is fun, not finescale.

The sails are very thin play and simply poke into crosses cut in the deck with a knife. The idea is that they can be repositioned depending on the wind direction. Once in the boat actually looks like a sailing vessel. In fact I really like the lines. There is an elegant simplicity about them.

A slot needs to be cut in the base to hold a metal keel and then it's off the the pool for a quick test. On the water Cokyn-Baba is whisked along by the merest breath of wind. Looks good too. Next I think, we need a coat of paint so she stands out on the boat club lake in the rest of the flotilla.

Cokyn-Baba

Cork boat bits
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker

This Sunday sees the annual KMBC open day. We'll have Slingshot racing (exciting), yacht racing (model sailors praying for the wind to blow), free sailing (anything goes) and a new challenge - cork boat racing.

The Cokyn-Baba is a toy boat made from a cork block and powered by think plywood sails. A sheet metal keel keeps the thing upright. Interest has been sparked by an article by Alastair Roach in last Octobers Marine Modelling magazine. He gave a brief history of the models, some instructions, plans and best of all the offer to supply parts for a very reasonable price. Once the competition was announced I sent off for my bits and the photos shows what I got. Marvellous.

Of course I didn't start work immediately, the bits have sat in the pending pile for a few months until I realised the deadline drew near. I also discovered that a number of my colleagues had built their own models and I didn't want to be left out !

Anyway, this should be a nice simple job I thought. The first task was cutting the cork sanding block in half and then shaping it to make a hull. Marking cork isn't as easy as I'd expected - pencil doesn't show up and I ended up using a ballpoint pen. Once I'd carefully marked out the top and cut it my Dad pointed out that he's just drawn his hull shape on a bit of folded card, cut this out and unfolded it to give an automatically symmetrical shape. Obvious really, except to me...