While researching the history of the Western Junk Rig, I was looking for this book, but it seems that it is very rare. The British Library has a copy, but will only allow the copying of a few pages at a time. The National Maritime Library in Greenwich is supposed to have one, but it's gone missing. The Smithsonian has one, I think its a photocopy. Couple of other major libraries in the States & Canada are supposed to have one but it doesn't come up on their detailed search.
Robin Blain has a copy which he was (understandably) reluctant to lend out - it's not only rare but fragile. He has tried to photocopy it in the past without success. So I set off with my trusty hand scanner to visit him with the intent of digitising it. The book is small, 6" x 4" approx, and consists of hand-cut pages of typescript bound together in a leather cover.
Unfortunately, the pages have not just yellowed, but gone a strange mid-grey colour, which have rendered them very difficult to scan, because the contrast is so poor. This is particularly true for the sketches, which were done on tissue/tracing paper in pencil. Examples of one such entry
here and
here.
Because of its rarity and potential value to the JRA, and also for my own benefit, I decided to go ahead and try to produce the best digitised version that I could. As this requires the redrawing of each of the 93 sketches in the book, using digital 'tracing' of the originals, this will take me a while. An example page from the digitised version, drawn from the above example is
here.