Hmmmm, I'd never thought of using aluminum cans before (from beer or soup, I guess it doesn't matter), how dumb is that? It makes sense a strong, easily workable but long lasting material. And so easy to come by too! (Kicks self in butt).
Sorry, no photos of the lifeboat. It went into the museum more than 20 years ago, before digital cameras, and I haven't seen it since. I only found out what museum it's in now about 4 years ago. Even if I had taken pix, it would have been of the ship as a whole, since the small boat was just a small part of a much larger (about 1.4 meter) build. The whole ship even had details down to cutlasses on racks over the gunports. The cutlasses were made out of paper clips, pounded flat on an anvil and then ground into shape, with that knuckle guards made out of brass and the handles with turned wire on them. There were about 34 matched swords.
The plans for the whaler were easy to come by. It was a book about period ships, and had a whaler seen end to end with the forward lines one the stbd side and the after lines on the port side, and a lengthwise view as well. I just photocopied them, then cut out the lines and doubled them over to glue onto the wood I used for the bulkheads.
