Thank you guys. No.1, as far as I can tell, no protection against the water was used, the hull was made of Oak and the seams between each plank were most likely caulked with tar, the water would have caused the planks to swell, helping to seal the seams. I do not know what the builders thought the life span of the vessel would have been either. At this point many of these creations were experiments, this one was built in the back yard of the designer! It did prove successful enough that depending upon the source that you use for reference between 4 and 50 more were built; I tend to think 50 is a bit much, and the number built were much lower. Plus the others were lumped together and generically called David's after the original, making it a bit more confusing to determine the actually number, and even the original from later copies. Interestingly, many people refer to this as a submarine, and while it does look like one, it was made to ride low on the water and was open on the top, so it could not submerge ( well it could, but only once
).
This is one reason I like kits from small manufactures, there are so many different subjects available, and often a lot of modelers pass them by.
Ernie
