fnkershner

Here is an article I found on the rigging of Hammocks.
Hammocks RN.pdf

Here is an article I found on the rigging of Hammocks.
Hammocks RN.pdf

Gil - I will make you a deal. Make me a deck hand on the next parade I will help you get her ready. I think we can get the whole club to help sand and polish.

I think everyone gets to the point that there is a preferred side of the ship.

I have to tell all of you I just can't wait to get up in the morning and read the latest new posts. This such a fantastic group. Wonderful builds, great kits. Makes it hard to go to work. Nice work Thomas, you should take credit for the excellent job. But I also agree with you Chuck should also take credit for his work. He has done this hobby a world of good.

So Gil is Far Out ready for the parade? This is your last weekend.
 
For those on this forum who do not know. Next weekend is Opening Day for boating here in the Puget Sound. There is a big celebration which includes a parade of boats on the water. Gil's boat "Far Out" has been the lead boat for the parade for a number of years. He hosts many dignitaries as they cruise from one lake to the other. I mention all of this because I suspect the Victory is going to take a back seat for a bit.

If you're doing a French ship from the 1700's this book is a "must have".  Even if you're not building a French ship, his techniques are worth the price.  It's available in several languages.  I have no connection to ANCRE other than being a happy customer.
 
From the ANCRE website:
DESCRIPTION Bernard Frölich has always been a builder of ship's models. As a geographical engineer, he discovered Jean Boudriot's books and monographs in the late 70s. He fell in love with the beauty of sailing ships of the classic period and since then has dedicated all his free time to building historical navy models.
This practical experience made him a genuine authority in that field. He has published numerous articles on that subject over the past years. At our request, he has gathered, edited and significantly enriched these articles in order to produce his book.
L'ART DU MODELISME describes the author's experience and methods in 300 pages abundantly illustrated with numerous drawings, sketchs and more than 600 commentated photos. In this book, Frölich describes in detail all the crafts that a shipmodeler must master : he must be in turn a shipwright; a carpenter; a cabinetmaker; a marqueter; a blacksmith; a ropemaker and a sailmaker. He shows that any beginner, if he is industrious and persevering, can master this art. This fact becomes all the more evident since we can see the tremendous progress made by the author himself through the use of photographs of his own work. This book itself is a tremendous learning experience. In the first twenty pages Frölich describes his studio, his tools and equipment and his library. He then devotes about one hundred pages to the timbers of a 1730 merchant vessel , the Mercure, and to M.de Tourville 's three-decker vessel of 1680, L'Ambitieux. In the next one hundred twenty pages, the author discusses the equipment, fittings, guns, decoration and sculptures, ship's boats and rigging. The final sixty pages offer a description of Frölich's own models (all at 1:48 scale ) : the schooner Jacinthe; the lugger Coureur; the brig Cyclope; the bomb ketch Salamandre; the 12-pdr frigate Belle Poule; the merchant vessel Mercure and the xebec Requin. The unfinished model of L'Ambitieux - the Chevalier de Tourville's three-decker vessel - is abundantly described in the chapter on framework.
Although the author denies it, this book is a genuine treatise on historical naval shipmodeling. The photographs included show that the skills of today 's shipmodelers match the talent of the creators of the period model pieces preserved and displayed in our museums.

 
 
 

I found the spreadsheet. I sent it to Chuck. He is going thru it and updating it. None of his kits are on that list. I am sure he will post it once he is done.

I have to tell all of you I just can't wait to get up in the morning and read the latest new posts. This such a fantastic group. Wonderful builds, great kits. Makes it hard to go to work. Nice work Thomas, you should take credit for the excellent job. But I also agree with you Chuck should also take credit for his work. He has done this hobby a world of good.

We could use it for signal flags.  "England expects.....".  We could utilize the whole SDSMG fleet for that one.

Floyd didn't want to depress you by telling you that those 'long handles' are really long........like 25-30 feet.  Not exactly like rowing your sweetheart around the local pond!

So Gil is Far Out ready for the parade? This is your last weekend.
 
For those on this forum who do not know. Next weekend is Opening Day for boating here in the Puget Sound. There is a big celebration which includes a parade of boats on the water. Gil's boat "Far Out" has been the lead boat for the parade for a number of years. He hosts many dignitaries as they cruise from one lake to the other. I mention all of this because I suspect the Victory is going to take a back seat for a bit.

Here is an article I found on the rigging of Hammocks.
Hammocks RN.pdf

oh boy!
My nameplate badge thing came in today so I just need to take it to an engraving place and I'll be all done!!!!!!!!!!!! Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And the best in the end - of course the decoration...
before baking:


after baking and painting ( gold Testors enamel + patina):

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

And now Royal Caroline...
I have finished another extension before the main cabin and made again the gilded crowns on the doors ( the new ones are better i suppose...  ) and also finished the hand pumps.


 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Canvas comes from old French “canevas” or “canevaz”, literally, ‘made of hemp’. Over the years, it morphed. The Dutch, not being able to grow cannabis, used flax; they called it “zeildoek”, literally, ‘sail cloth’. The weight of the cloth (pounds per square whatever) determined its usage. The lighter grades were called linen, the heavier grades were called canvas (presumably because some hemp fiber was incorporated into the weave).  After a while, sailcloth was just called “duck”; soft-duck, hard-duck, canvas-duck, etc..
 
The Russians developed a technique for double carding flax to make it more pliable. It was very useful on linen-weight and intermediate-weight cloths. Sailcloth prepared in this way eventually became known as, simply “duck”. The heavy-weather stuff was still, simply “canvas”.
 
All made on hand looms, till about 1800, so the lighter, softer, fibers made for a more tightly woven, resilient, and stronger cloth (for its weight) than the larger fiber flax/hemp equivalents. For all its advantages, the cost (and time) needed to trim, card, and twist flax into fibers of a size useable for courses or topsails, made it uneconomical for all but the wealthiest. The Russian Navy used it, but then, the Czar said so, so …
 
The colonies were cut off from internal manufacture of this sort in the normal course of events, and during the unpleasantness, were supposedly cut off from  Euro imports altogether, so we had to do something. There was decades of experience with cotton as an alternative to flax, but it was all simple short staple: hardy, coarse, but flexible, it wasn’t much better than flax, and cotton had the disadvantage of being more hygroscopic than flax. Okey dokey, except for the weight aloft rule.
 
Then somebody (who deserves a statue) thought about the long-staple Sea Island variety. Not as hardy, but just as flexible, if not more so, but could also be carded fine, and woven tight. Because the fibers could be linked and twisted, it was a perfect solution for light and intermediate sailcloth weights. The biggies, of course, still used hemp in the weave. Until about the 1800s or so, when the power loom came on-line and could weave ‘tighter and lighter’ than before.
 
So, even today, sailboats raise “canvas”, even though it’s Dacron. Rarely, will you hear the term duck. Hemp is what ya smoke, and flax is what happens to your winkie with too much hemp.
 
I really hope I haven’t given you more information than you really wanted.
 
Ciao. John

Slowly progressing on my build, unfortunatly work commitments haven't allowed me to spend as much time on it as i would like.


Started adding deck fixtures and tapering masts, bowsprit & booms. I am using a method I found here on this forum (again). I fit the dowel in my drill & hold a piece of sandpaper in my hand. It is working reasonably well, but a word of warning - it gets bloody hot. Hopefully post more progress soon.

Keith,  It's my favorite time of day with a wee dram of scotch.
Floyd, "Wigwam burners?"  I was never up close.  Always just off the shore passing in a boat. However, there were a lot of them up the coast.

As soon as I can I will post it and yes it needs some updates.

I have a copy of the old spreadsheet from MSW 1.0. It listed all kits on the market. I will send it to a moderator once my network at my house is fixed.

Dave - If you don't post the pictures of your build from this past meeting I will. Mike did a great job showing some of your very clean details.

While watching Sarah steep the tea for the sails last night I joked with myself that she is building a "scratch and sniff" model .

Another very satisfied Model Machines customer checking in.
 
Like many people, I work hard for my money and try to not spend it frivolously. When I first started building and was looking for tools I kept hearing about Jim Byrnes and Model Machines but when I looked at the prices I thought they were out of my price range so I bought cheaper. Big mistake. Over time I got to see and use some of Jim’s machines and realized that price differential was nothing compared to what you got for the extra money.
 
I had purchased a drawplate someplace else and right away I found that as the diameters got smaller the accuracy got worse and worse until it got to the point where some of the smallest holes actually had a larger diameter than some of the “bigger” holes. Even still I figured I could make it work. At some point someone let me try Jim’s drawplate. WOW, what a difference. Yes, it’s just a piece of metal but it is a very precisely engineered piece of metal. I decided that it was worth it to upgrade. As noted elsewhere on MSW, Jim’s drawplate even comes with directions and care instructions. It is a simple concept beautifully executed. I did not discard my old drawplate, it sits on my bench and I use it as a paperweight and in that function it works perfectly. It is a constant reminder that even relatively simple things can be done extremely poorly or conversely as in the case of a Byrnes’s machine, extremely well.
 
My next Byrnes purchase was the disk sander. As with the drawplate I got to use it before I purchased it. Being slightly older now and a bit wiser about smaller tools I thought twice about buying something cheaper and did not hesitate to buy the Byrnes sander. It has seen some heavy use since it arrived last week and I could not be happier. The accuracy you can get using one of Jim’s sanders can’t be duplicated on other, somewhat cheaper machines.
 
Customer service as noted by others is on a par with their machines, the best in the business.

Jim - it's good to hear you are getting back to it.  Sounds like you've had a bit of a rough road - hopefully all is turning to the good now.
 
So no one will think I am slacking completely, I attached the block for the staysail throat halliard to the spring stay bail.  I must remember to keep it on the port side when I get around to attaching the stay, as it belays to a pin on the port side of the foremast saddle.
 

 
Bob