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JerryTodd

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About JerryTodd

  • Birthday 09/20/1960

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    http://todd.mainecav.org/model/
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    geraldatodd

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    Male
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    Severna Park Maryland USA
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    Astronomy, sailing, horse riding, motor cycle riding, wood working, living history and reenacting, wargaming, ship modeling, history, maps, reading, ice cream, animals in general but cats especially, a lady named Daphne

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  1. Oops, I skipped over some other Parrotts... I needed a pair of 150# Parrotts on pivots for someone modeling the Susquehanna in 1:72 scale, and I modeled it based on these images: 150# Parrott on the Wabash 150# on the Nipsic, post-war. and the 3D model... The fellow modeling the Susquehanna sent me some helpful data, I printed the 150's he'd need, but they didn't come out very well, though you'd have to know where to look. For my own list of Constellation's guns, I need a 100# Parrott for when she was a training ship in the 1870's. I based that on images of the Mendota's 100# Parrott, which if you look close, is on an identical carriage as the 150# on Wabash. and the 3D model... Unless something else pops out the blue, the only Naval Parrott left to do is the 20 pounder that Constellation had as an aft pivot gun during the war.
  2. Over on Facebook's Civil War Navies group, a series of photos came up for discussion, one well-known image in this series is the "Powder Monkey," a colorized version shown here... The other images of the series have various sailors posing next to this same gun, and one sailor with a telescope that's more around the rear of the piece, showing some added details. And another with a Black sailor leaning on a IX inch Dahlgren, with this Parrott in the background. Notice in the last image there's a difference in height evident between the Parrott's and Dahlgren's carriages showing the Parrott's Marsilly carriage was fitted to it. (click the pics to see larger versions) Until now, I always figured the gun was a 30# Parrott, but when I put my model of the 30# Parrott on my Marsilly carriage, it didn't match the pictures. I thought I could easily knock out another gun for this project, but it wasn't gonna be that easy. So I put the 100# tube on and that was too big. Knowing the images were taken on board the New Hampshire, I looked into her. I learned she was armed, in addition to her broadside battery, with 4 100# Parrotts. More digging showed she received 60# Parrotts in addition to, or to replace the 100 pounders. So I went looking for data on the 60# gun. I didn't get as lucky as I did with the 20# and 30# guns, but I found a photo of a piece of a similar document from the same original source, and despite the distortion, I could read the measurements. The also had a profile view of a Marsilly type carriage with it, but the drawing of the carriage didn't match the photos, and I don't know the original source of that drawing. So, I added the 60# Parrott to my collection, and modeled my 60# Parrott on a Marsilly carriage. There was another 60# to model. When the Civil War broke out the Navy Yard at Gosport Virginia was abandoned and everything that could leave, was burned, including ships like the 120 gun Pennsylvania, the frigate Merrimack, and others. The sloop of war Cumberland was towed out by a pair of tugs, and escaped. Sent to Boston for repairs, her aft 10 inch Dahlgren was replaced with a 60# Parrott on a pivot carriage. Some reading suggests Buchanan, commanding the former Merrimack, now Virginia, targeted the Cumberland, specifically because she was known to be armed with a rifled gun. I found a reference to that gun in this commemorative item on an auction site. That item aside, I have no clue precisely what her pivot carriage looked like. So I used the carriage from my model of the IX Dahlgren pivot, altered a little to fit the very skinny Parrott rifle, so here's my take on the Cumberland's famous aft pivot. The STLs for both these models have been posted at Thingiverse for those interested.
  3. I got a pm on Thingiverse requesting a 7 inch Armstrong breech-loading rifle. I tried to brush it off with "I'm only doing Naval weapons, not fortress or shore batteries," and it was pointed out that HMS Warrior mounts several of these pieces, albeit in fiberglass. It turned out to be interesting enough to want to model, but like everything else so far, getting really solid data to work from was a real pain. Being a British piece, I was surprised by how hard it was to find data, and that on the tube only. Like the American guns, there's even less data to be had regarding carriages and mounts, that is till the 1880's and later, you know, guns I'm not looking for. Anyway, this was the best drawing I was able to find, while the next one helped me wrap my head around the breach mechanism the best, except I didn't find that till I'd pass the model to the requester already. I do the tube in Anim8or starting with what it calls an N-gon. You specify how many points you want and pull what's basically a circle from the center out to the diameter you want - ish. I typically start with 64 points. Then I extrude or extend this into a cylinder with as many segments as the gun has sections, plus a few. I build the gun (or whatever object I'm modeling) in front of one or more Reference Images, as you can see I used with the 10" shell-gun shown in wire-frame. This isn't CAD software, so don't look for measurements. Since then, I smooth the cylinder once or twice, before I start shaping the gun. This gives the object more, but smaller facets, making it look smoother. Notice that faceting on the rear gun's tube compared to the foreground gun's. When I was making airplane for a flight sim back at the turn-of-the-century, using this software, more polygons (facets) meant more work work and memory for the flight sim, so I got in the habit of being frugal with my polygons. I don't need to do that here, and have to remind myself not to. The smoothing does weird things at bends and corners, so I do it before shaping the cylinder to the gun. That includes the ends of the cylinder, so I cut those off like some folk toss the heels of a loaf of bread. I move and resize the segments of the cylinder to each section of the gun's reference image, but on guns like this Armstrong, each section is made of several segments; for instance, the muzzle end of the gun is a ring for the muzzle, a ring for the outer face, the corner is usually chamfered a bit so there's a ring, or two, or more, each a little larger than the one before to make the transition from the flat face of the muzzle to the body of the gun depending on how rounded this corner is. Where the first bulge rounds up from the taper of the barrel takes 3 or 4 segments to make it look rounded, as you can see in this wire-frame view of this same gun. I did this down the length of the tube until it looked like it was supposed to. Sometime I needed to insert or add rings/segments (this gun just ate them up with that Michelin Man shape) and I used a knife tool to just cut a new one near where I needed it, and moved and resized it as usual. This is actually the easier part of modeling a cannon. It's the asymmetrical and added on bits like that box shape at the trunnions that make things interesting. Eventually I got the gun to look right, though it took some time to figure out the breech. Again, none of these models will have moving parts or be functional, and since almost all of them are muzzle-loaders, that's not an issue, but I couldn't resist making the breach-plug removable, or printing one for myself. Yes, the handles on the balls got snipped off after printing, my goof; and no, it's not rifled. The hole for the breach should actually go all the way through. It's a little small at the bottom to make a ledge for the plug to sit on. The way I modeled it, a puddle would form every time they swabbed with no way to drain it. I'll fix the model when I make a carriage for it; one of these, or both?
  4. Helping out another modeler with 3D printed guns for his 1:96 scale model of the Harriett Lane I started researching and 3D modeling the guns he would need. In the mean time, I got the idea to make a sampler of one of every gun Constellation ever carried from 1855 to 2024. Those I would print in the model's 1:36 scale and mount on a plank or something to put on display with the ship when I took her to events. Chuck's wanted his model of the Lane to carry the armament she was captured with at Galveston in 1864; which according to Phillip Tucker who was on the ship, and who was published in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly in 1918. as saying: A four-inch rifled Parrot is a 30# Parrott on a pivot carriage; two eight-inch Dahlgren Columbiads folks interpret as being 9 inch Dahlgrens on Marsilly carriages, though there was such a thing as an 8 inch Columbiad, even 8 inch shell-guns. The 24# howitzers seemed pretty straight forward, though I interpret "ship carriages" to mean boat-sleds in their case. Someone made a nice graphic of how they thought this armament may have been organized on on the Lane. My question though, was why they show a 10 inch Dahlgren pivot, when Tucker said it was a 9 inch gun. I found a photo of a 9 inch Dahlgren on a pivot mount on board the Miami (often IDed as the Mendota) that showed it existed and that the 9 inch had it's own carriage, and not just a scaled down XI inch carriage. The Lane's armament was thrown over-board when the ship went aground at Pamlico Sound in August of '61 and she was repaired and rearmed back at Hampton Roads. The 10 inch Dahlgren wasn't as common a gun as the IX's or XI's and those in existence were already on the frigates and razeed sloops, except for one taken off Cumberland at Boston and replaced with a 60# Parrott. Leaning toward Tucker's statement, I started the 3D model of the IX gun tube, and while trying to discern the pivot carriage from the Miami photo, went ahead making the tube and the Marsilly carriage. Of all the Naval guns of the American Civil War, the IX Dahlgren on a Marsilly carriage, and the XI Dahlgren on it's designed for it pivot carriage, are the easiest to find data and images for. The IX was modeled in just a couple of hours. I'm doing these as static models, so I'm not concerned with wheels turning, or guns elevating. I printed 4 of the guns, 2 for the Lane with 2 spares, in 1:96. In the 1870's, Constellation was a training ship and armed with 8 of these guns, so I printed one at 1:36 for my intended display. In my drawing software, using the photo as a reference; I scaled the tube in the photo to the length of the actual IX tube and traced the carriage to get the right proportions, since I didn't have a measured drawing like I did the for Constellation's 10 inch shell-gun pivot. The slide is that from the XI Dahlgren carriage. Once modeled, I printed one off for the Lane. This one wasn't on my list of Constellation guns, so I didn't need to print one in 1:36. The Lane, still needed the 24# howitzer, which I had usable data for; and a 30# Parrott pivot. Constellation, during the Civil War got a 30# Parrott forward, and a 20# Parrott aft, to replace the 10 inch pivots that were removed in 1859. I managed to find drawings online for the 20 and 30 from the Navy's Bureau of Ordnance that made sure I had the tubes accurate. Years ago I visited the Constellation and met with the folks running the "restoration." One of the things they showed me was a drawing of a 30# Parrott on a pivot carriage. I was modeling Constellation as she was in 1856, so didn't figure I needed plans for a gun she got in 1862; but I took some photos of the drawing anyway. Now it turns out I did need them, and just had to find those photos. Once found, it turns out I had good data for the carriage itself, but not much for the slide. In the mean time, I got started on the 24 pounders. Using the gun tube from the boat-howitzer, I scaled it to the size of the 24# version, and scaled my reference image to that to get the proportions right. Then I printed 4 of them in 1:96 for the Lane. When the 3D model of the 30# Parrott was done, I printed it in 1:96; and since Constellation had one, in 1:36. One the guns for the Lane were all printed, I boxed them up and mailed them off. I cranked out two guns that made up Constellation's original broadside; the 8 inch shell gun, and the 32# gun and printed them in 1:36 scale. I now had 4 of 11 types of gun Constellation had, printed. While posting the STL for all these guns on Thingiverse, I got a request for something a bit off the track.
  5. When 3D printing became available to me, I went to work on creating 3D models of the parts I'd need for my models (all linked in my signature below). Even before 3D printing was "a thing" I started a model in Anim8or* of Constellation's pivot guns. Just a basic model at first, but when I actually got a 3D printer, details were added to the model. I had built the basic model in wood with the intention of learning photo-etch to detail them. 3D printing negated that entirely. The guns were modeled to a plans for the 10 inch shell-gun pivots for Mississippi that were acquired from the National Archives in College Park Maryland. (click the pic to see full-size)... It took a couple of tries, but I managed to get a pair of pivot guns that if not perfect prints, were usable, and with more and better detail than I could have managed by hand. The next gun needed for Constellation was the boat-howitzer for her launch. Working mainly from the images in Boat Armament in the US Navy 1856, and any drawings and photos I could find online, I based my model on an existing boat-gun located in Fairfax Virginia with iron wheels. Despite the spindly looking nature of the gun's field carriage, it was actually quite a fun model to make; lots of circles. Once printed, and painted, it took it's place in Constellation's launch. Much later I felt the wooden wheeled version was probably more appropriate for Constellation in 1856, so I added a set of wood wheels to the model howitzer. Since I didn't model Constellation's gundeck, I didn't need to make the 16 8 inch shell-guns and 4 32# guns that would require. I did model a 6# gun in 1:20 scale for Pride of Baltimore, and started on 18# Blomefields and 32# carronades for Macedonian. But that's getting off-topic... * Anim8or is free 3D modeling software that I used back at the turn-of-the-century to make 3D models for a WWI flight sim/game. I use it today because I'm used to it after two+ decades, though either it or I aren't capable of doing some of things I want/need to do. I can't recommend it to complete novices, but It's still available at anim8or.com.
  6. The "Mendota" image is actually probably on the Miami as the Mendota mounted a 100# Parrot and did not have a IX Dahlgren pivot forward. (In the good photos of the 100# Parrott you can see "Mendota" on the sailor's hat bands.) Things being misidentified isn't unusual, Constellation's been miss-IDed as a frigate for decades The Navy had taken to painting everything black in the 1850's; hatch combings; waterways; fixtures, like scuttles and vents; and gun carriages. In my sailing days things were generally painted white so you can see them at night, like white circles around deck-pads and eye-bolts; So I found this blackness thing a bit odd. Oak also doesn't take paint well, and in the most detailed images, carriages don't look painted; there's no chips, peeling, runs, globs in checks or seams, etc This colorized image of the "Powder Monkey" on the New Hampshire is the best colorization of this particular image I know. If you look closely at the carriage, there's no evidence of paint on the wood anywhere and the color's probably pretty close to how it actually appeared. In fact, the carriage looks just like the unpainted oak on these items on Pride of Baltimore, water casks and gun carriages. note the sloppy paint job on the barrel bands.
  7. I got a copy of the book, and that drawing below the Mendota/Miami photo on page 218 is from the Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy and is the carriage and slide designed for the XI Dahlgren. I put all those images on one page, plus my interpretation of the IX carriage The other carriage shown in any detail is the "Traversing carriage" for Columbiads. The only other pivot carriage in shown OIUSN is a top-down view of the Traversing Carriage in the diagrams for the positions of gunners for an 8" pivot gun, bow and stern. As for my Guns of Constellation project, the IX pivot isn't on the list, and though the XI is, it's on an iron carriage, which I'm assuming will be this sort of thing... Here's a resized and cropped version of the best resolution image of the Mendota photo I've found.
  8. The lower square on it's own yard is akin to a spinnaker or a "drifter" today. It's set "flying" from on deck as is the t'gallant. The tops'l is the only square that lives on the mast, and even that's designed to be lowered completely (notice none of the yards have parrells and only the tops'l yard has footropes). The course yard, which is the lowest yard on the model to which the tops'l sheets, is typically lowered to the rail and tied down when the tops'l's not in use. Petersson's Rigging Fore-and-Aft Craft the details of all of this pretty much exactly as it is on this model.
  9. Digging around the hard-drive, I found photos I took of the aforementioned drawings of a 30pdr Parrott on a pivot carriage. Not the best photos of a st of plans, but I took them for interest, not figuring I'd need to use them. I immediately rebuilt my model, though there's still some work to be done. Here's the 30 alongside the 150
  10. The 32 pdr gun has been next to done for a while, but the cascable needed to be modeled for it to be finished, so it's done at last. There seems to have been a standard slide-chassis for nearly every Civil War period Naval pivot gun, and since making one for the 9" Dahlgren, a big part of the of the guns to follow is done as well. IX Dahlgren on a pivot mount on shore and painted gray all over I have an 11" Dahlgren on my list, but it's on an pivot iron carriage, according to a drawing showing how, in the 1870's, a gun port on either side was opened to 10' for the 11" Dahlgren and a 100pdr Parrot. I made the tube for the 11" Dahlgren, and the slide for the 9", so I went ahead and made the wood carriage for the 11" for the heck of it. Then it was back to the Parrotts I was near completing the 100 and 150 pounders when someone sent me a chart of measurements, that included things like the trunnions. I had been using photos only for these guns proportions. I reworked the breaches on all the Parrotts and modeled the cascables. 100pdr or 8 inch Parrot 150pounder or 10 inch Parrott. This one's for someone modeling the Susquehanna which carried two of them. Here's the 150 Parrot with the XI Dahlgren for comparison The Parrotts were narrower guns, generally, and had smaller diameter trunnions then the Dahlgrens. This seems to have been compensated for with the full-cover cap-squares like this 30pounder on a Marsilly carriage has... Years ago, the Constellation folks showed me a drawing from the Archives of a pivot carriage for the 20 & 30pdr Parrotts the ship carried during the Civil War. I never got a copy myself, figuring I didn't need them. Now I can't find them. Now I do, and can't find them, nor can I find any drawings or photos on a 20 or 30pdr Parrot on a pivot mount I conjectured this up for the 30pdr... Just today, someone asked if I planned on doing other guns with a wink for a 7" Blakley Rifle and the 10" Columbiad. I guess this little side project isn't just about Constellation's guns any more and I should snip this out into it's own thread/log?
  11. I keep searching for photos or drawings of the Mendota's 9" pivot gun with no luck, so moved on to make the 24 pdr howitzers the Lane is said to have, and printed them at 1:96 scale. On the pivot gun, I had to conjecture the unvisible bits to finish the model. I then printed it at 1:96 scale. None of that has anything to do with my list of Constellation's guns, but I'm getting to that. Having the data at hand, and able to take some parts already made for other 3D models, like re-scaling the 10 inch shell-gun; I made Constellation's 8 inch shell-gun of 63cwt on a Naval truck carriage inside of a day. It's not quite finished yet, but here's the model, and with the 10 inch pivot gun. With that gun about to check off the list, I started looking for data on Parrott rifles. The Lane and my list needs a 30 pounder on a pivot, and I also need a 20 pounder for the list. Again, finding usable data was difficult. I found a drawing for the 30, and then another so much like it I thought it was the same gun, till my eye caught one of them was missing a muzzle flair, and so was a drawing of the 20 pounder. The version for the Lane will go on the "standard" chassis the IX Dahlgen pivot used, with a modified Naval truck carriage, because I can't find plan nor picture of a smallish Parrott pivot mount. The versions for my list will probably get the same. When I visited the ship years ago, they showed me drawings from the Archives of a wooden pivot mount for a 20/30 pounder Parrot, but claimed the ship got iron mounts. They never said what source they got that from, and several other things they told me turned out to be wrong, so I going with the wooden mount. The STL files for the Howitzer and IX Pivot are posted on Thingiverse, for those so inclined. The 8 inch gun will join them as soon as it's finished.
  12. The resolution is high enough to get a good finish, but since it prints in layers there's going to be some lines and that butterfly wing texture. It's as much or more dependent on the 3D model. The gun tube I made from a 64-sided cylinder then applied a "smooth" feature to it after getting the general shape, which made it 192 sided, I think. More smaller smaller polygons looks smoother than fewer bigger ones. The trucks are 32-sided, and you can see the facets on them. My models are mostly "low-poly" because it's a habit I got into making 3D models for a flight sim back in the early 90's when too many polygons would stop the sim dead in it's tracks. It's akin to my programming from back then too when a 30 meg hard drive cast $700. The pivot gun on the left is the "low-poly" tube I made years before I ever 3D printed anything. The one on the right got a higher-poly tube which is much better visually. These are 1:36 scale. Scaling them down to say 1:48 or 1:76 might reduce the visibility of faceting on something like the trucks, but you'd still see it on the gun barrel. Resin printing is very faithful to the 3D model that way.
  13. The first gun I started on was the on a pivot carriage. It's not one on my list, but the Lane had a 9" pivot, so this one will be printed in 1:96 scale for that purpose. The carriage is based on the photo taken onboard the gunboat Mendota or Miami, anyone's guess. While I think the slide is the "standard" one you usually see under the 11" gun, the carriage is different and looks to be a truck or Marsilly carriage, stretched a bit. I started building the 3D model while searching for drawings and images that might show me the parts obscured by the crewmen. The Marsilly carriage, on the other hand, I have plenty of data for, and actually had it's 3D model made inside a couple of hours. I printed the four 1:96 scale models needed for the Lane which came out nicely, though scaling it down that small lost some details, like the eyebolts. This gun and mount are on my list of Constellation's guns, so I tried to print one in 1:36 scale and failed twice. I eventually separated the tube and the carriage into two parts and managed to get a usable print. The trunnions were a little out of round, but I brush resin on the parts and zap them with UV light to "glue" them together. Any remaining gaps are filled with liquid resin and zapped, so that wasn't really an issue. I did lose the eyebolt on the back of the carriage getting it loose from the supports, but I'll drill and place a metal one there to replace it. Here's the 1:36 scale mother Dahlgren and it's 1:96 scale "chicks" and on Constellation next to her 10" pivot mounted shell-gun - both 1:36 scale. I still haven't found more drawings or images of the 9" pivot mount, except one photo in the series that has the back of the gun in the background, and a much better version of the photo posted above that's easier to see the details in. Since I don't need it for my list, I may only print it in 1:96.
  14. Getting into a discussion on guns for another member's model of the Harriett Lane, got me thinking about Constellation's armament, and how it changed over her life. I thought it would be nice to model a sample of all the guns the ship carried over the span of her career. to sit with her when-ever she's on static display. Modeling 9 inch Dahlgren tubes in 1:96 for the Lane got me thinking of this. So, the ship was armed as below at various point over time. At Commissioning 16 x 8-inch shell guns on 4-truck carriages 4 x 32-pounder guns on 4-truck carriages 2 x 10-inch pivot mounted shell guns (removed July 15 1859) 1 12pdr Dahlgren boat howitzer (in launch) During the Civil War 16 x 8-inch shell guns on 4-truck carriages 4 x 32-pounder guns on 4-truck carriages 1 x 30-pounder pivot mounted Parrot Rifle (bow) iron carriage? 1 x 20-pounder pivot mounted Parrot Rifle (stern) iron carriage? 1870's 8 x 9-inch Dahlgren guns on Marsilly carriages? 1 x 100-pounder Parrot Rifle on wood carriage (gundeck starboard #6 port enlarged to 10ft) 1 x 11-inch Dahlgren on iron carriage (gundeck portside #6 port enlarged to 10ft) 1914 20 x 24-pounder guns borrowed from Constitution for Celebration of War of 1812 in Baltimore 1956+ 24 x 24-pounder guns Making one of every gun she's carried will require modeling and printing the following list: 8-inch shell gun on 4-truck carriage 32-pounder gun on 4-truck carriage 10-inch pivot mounted shell gun 12pdr Dahlgren boat howitzer 20-pounder Parrot Rifle on iron pivot carriage 30-pounder Parrot Rifle on iron pivot carriage 9-inch Dahlgren on Marsilly carriage 100-pounder Parrot Rifle on wood shifting carriage 11-inch Dahlgren on iron shifting carriage 24-pounder gun (early 1800's vintage) This was because of her mistaken identity as the frigate, but she carried them just the same. I'll built these so they'll be scalable from 1:96, up to 1:36, and most likely I'll make the STLs available separately on Thingiverse.
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