JSGerson

Magnificent work! I was however, confused by your statement: "To form the wheel I layered two more layers on the first. Each layer was offset by one third of the wheel." Offset how? I'm not sure what you mean. As for not having a lathe, I don't think you need one for this delicate work. I use my cordless Dremel variable speed rotary tool for the small delicate stuff,. With just a file on the spinning material, you can produce some amazing things. It's how I made the cleats from a nail I used in the seat of ease area. Jon

Wonderful. I thought we may have had another incomplete build. Good to hear you'll back. Jon

I'm impressed with your ship's wheel. How long did you have to soak in (I assume water) the basswood to get it flexible enough to wrap it around the 3/4" socket? How did you drill the holes for the spokes without breaking the narrow rings and so precisely? I repeat, very impressive. I too plan on substituting wooden wheels for the kit supplied cast metal one, but instead of a total scratch build which I wasn't sure I could pull off, I bought a couple of ship wheel kits from Syren Ship Model Co. last year or so which are substantially more complicated that your elegant method. We'll see what happens. Jon

Thanks for looking in. The jig actual builds itself, just look at all three of us. You, me, and bthoe have virtually the same jig due to the the logic of the carriage assembly. It's just good engineering. I thought about the canopy glue, but just didn't have any on hand. I keep forgetting to get some. I'll get it done at some point. Jon

To put together 22 gun carriages simply and consistently, a simple jig was made that held the various pieces in their proper positions. Shown below is my first attempt at a dry fit. Now I must assemble and glue all 22 carriages.

The remainder of the gun carriage pieces were much simpler to fabricate. Pretty much just slicing pieces of wood to length or cutting out the pieces using templates made from the US Navy plan. To create the Quion, a disk sander was used. Note: The US Navy plan uses the term “Coin” for Quion.

Continuing, the axials were the next carriage parts fabricated. The axials act both as the wheel support with the typical circle cross section at the ends and as the support for the carriage sides which rests directly on the square or rectangular cross sections interior portions. It appears that the fore and aft axials are fabricated out of single pieces of lumber. Due to the small scale, the resulting shapes have been simplified slightly from my original design sketches. As I was trying to wrap my head on the fabrication process, I ran across bthoe’s wonderful build in which he did the exact same thing for his carriages. I had forgotten about his build as he hasn’t posted since November 2022. For the most part, he and I basically came up with the same carriage pieces dimensions within 1/64” of each other. Stock boxwood was properly sized to the desired profile for the fore and aft axials on the Byrnes saw. Then 22 pieces of boxwood for each axial were cut from the applicable axial boxwood. Utilizing the fine 1/32” width slicing blade, each axial piece was trimmed at the ends to create the truck wheel portion of the axial.

Gun Deck Gun Carriage Fabrication First, I did some research with the 1907 US Navy plan No 14939 (sheet No.:3103) 24 Pdr Gun and Gun Carriage to determine the proper carriage dimensions. This revealed that I needed as a minimum a piece of wood 15/16” wide x 5/16” tall to create the carriage sides. The plan was to cut the carriage profile into the wood block such that I could cut 1/16” slices from it like a loaf of bread creating the sides of the carriage. 44 sides at 1/16” thick required a length of wood almost 3” long. I chose boxwood for this task because it will hold a clean-cut edge and is not as fragile as basswood. However, because I did not have a piece of boxwood of those dimensions, I had to laminate two pieces of 1¼” wide x ¼” thick wood together to get the required height. I could have cut the wood stock 3” in length to make one laminate block, but that would have meant that the resulting carriage sides were cut cross grain. I wanted the side made with the wood grain requiring rip cuts. From the 1¼” x ¼” wood stock, I cut six 1½” length pieces to make three laminated stacks a ½” thick. Then this was cut down to 3/8” thick. The scale size image of the gun carriage was rubber cemented to the 1½” face (with the grain) resulting in excess wood on either side of the image. That was left for support when cutting the profile with the Byrnes saw. The process worked as indicated in the schematic and photo below. Shown are two sides that were sliced off with the excess support material removed in comparison to the original gun carriage kit.

Gun Deck Fully Rigged Guns With trepidation, I have finally arrived at the gun deck to fabricate and install all of its armament, rigging, and structural deck elements. Like its furniture I fabricated previously, (but not installed yet), all of it will have to be scratch built, save for the gun barrels. There are 22 gun ports remaining waiting for their guns. Some years ago, I was far sighted enough to buy from a fellow Constitution builder, his excess Model Shipway cast metal guns he purchased from Model Expo for his build. I forget why they were available, but he sold them to me much cheaper than what I would have to pay for at Model Expo. I believe at the time when he bought these, Model Expo was selling them at a discount rate if they were bought in bulk. Today, Model Expo sells the gun and carriage package (MS 0668) singularly for $7.00/pkg. No bulk discounts. That’s $210.00 for all 30 guns, a tidy sum. The laser cut carriage kit pieces that came with the guns were useless to me as they did not match the US Navy plans (too short in height), and all you got were the two sides, a simplistic unrealistic bottom, four wheels and a dowel to make some bare unsupported axials. There was no front transom or breast (bumper) piece and forget about any hardware. Still, it’s cheaper than Syren Ship Mode Co.’s offerings. Their guns are of course much better quality (either black resin or turned brass) so obviously you pay even more for them. The carriage kits are better too and are sold separately, an additional cost should you want them. Luckily, Mr. Hunt’s practicum for the Rattlesnake, my previous build, had his followers scratch build the gun carriages, so I have some experience doing this.

Beautifully done gratings. They look exactly like the real thing

Like you. I did a lot of research and as you read my log, you will find that I rely a lot on the US Navy plans which you can still download for free from the US Constitution Museum. The collection of plans is not complete and range in dates from the 1800s to recent times. The MS kit is based on the 1927 restoration so if you follow the kit faithfully, it won't look exactly like it is today after the 2017 restoration, which what I'm making. Also I've built up an extensive library of images (approx. 4,000) so if you need a view or a "better" view of something, there is a good chance I may be able to help. I write my log in Word as well, but crop, group, and annotate images in PowerPoint. I group the final picture if there are multiple images, then "save as picture" as a png file. The text is simply copy and paste straight from Word into the online log. Mr. Hunt is an excellent builder but he has his quirks. I followed him fatefully for my first square rigger, the Rattlesnake and found that as I progressed into the practicum, he started to cut corners or did not address certain details. He stated that he is the first to admit that his way may or may not be the best way to do something. His practicums are like a diary written in real time, so if he makes a mistake, you will make the same mistake until he tells you oops, have to do this over later in his instructions. If something is not clear, check other builds to see how well they handled the problem. I am using him as a suggested guide for my Conny. As you read my log, I inform the reader when I'm deviating from the practicum and why. Two big deviations are I am adding the gun deck interior (scratch built) and have removed the topgallant rail (the one above the top rail) which was added in1927 but found to be not accurate to the ship so it was removed in the 1970s I think. The ship is a chameleon and changes its look over time, so if you haven't decided what era your model is representing, now is the time to choose. Jonathan

I just discovered your build log in the past couple of weeks due to your comments on UsedtoSail's log. As I started to read your log, it seems you found me first, crediting me with pointing you to Mr. Robert Hunt's practicum. You had listed a number of build logs that you were following, but I was surprised you did not list (or maybe you haven't discovered) Ken Forman's (xKen) build log. Ken is a professional model maker and kit designer. He designed the Model Shipway's USS Constitution Cross Section model. His is a worthy log to read. I am curious though, are you posting on two build logs? I ask this because your posts on this site are pdf files from another document. You are the first one I've run into using pdf files. I mirror my ModelShipWorld posts on ModelShipBuilder. Looking forward to your future posts. Jonathan

See if the attached US Navy file helps Jon 4513172a - Fore, Main & Mizzen Rigging Channels.pdf

The ¼” rim circle was cut from 1/64” plywood while the 5/32” plug circle was cut from 1/32” plywood. The plug circle edges were filed to slope inward to form a short, truncated cone. The hinge was cut from 0.005” brass sheet into 1/16” wide strips. First, the rim and plugs components were wood glued together on center. Then the brass strip was CA glued to the backside almost across the full diameter of the rim piece to provide the maximum gluing surface. After the CA glue dried solid, the plugs were painted black. Slits were formed in the rail just above the hawsers with an X-acto knife for the flat brass hinge to slip into. To install the plugs, the brass strip was bent 90° so that the plug would be in the open position when inserted into the hull. The open position is needed to allow anchor ropes and chains to pass through the hawser later in the build.

Hawser Plugs This one I almost missed, the hawser plugs, which BTW are not covered in the practicum. I thought they were going to be a little tricky; but they weren’t. Once more, I used plywood for added strength for these items due to their size. There were only three components that made up the plug: the outer rim, the inner plug, and the hinge.

The gun port lids were assembled and installed with the dummy guns.

Again, the tampions were made from plywood, but this time, 1/32” thick. Looking at the photos, they look at least 2 inches thick beyond the face of the muzzle. That translates to 1/32” scale. Once again, I painted a dot in lieu of the star, this time black on red. I abandoned hanging a ring from an eye bolt in the center of the tampion as it was too small to make at scale.

Tampion fitted Guns The kit’s cast metal guns are OK but not great. Looking directly at the muzzles you can tell they are not perfectly round, so some detailing was required. They were painted black,

Bow Gun Port Lids Like on the transom ports, 1/32” eyebolts and scratch made 1/32” rings were used. Shown below are the parts for the bow lids. The tampions were made from 1/64” thick plywood. I tried to make a decal for the tampion so that the black star could be seen, but the resolution for this small image was quite poor and had low contrast. Instead, a red dot was painted directly on the black painted surface of the tampion which looked just fine from a foot away.

The raw gun port lids are provided by the kit which consists of an upper and lower part. The upper has two window port openings and the top half muzzle opening for the gun. The bottom lid just has the bottom half muzzle opening. The kit also provides pseudo photo-etched hinges. Mr. Hunt’s practicum creates the pull mechanism out styrene which I didn’t like. As with the port lids on the transom, the upper lid opening mechanism consisted of an eyebolt and ring assembly on either side of the lid. All the ports except the bow port will have pull lines to open the top lid. As simple as these port lids look, there are a lot of components for each one. Ten in total. 2 raw lids (upper and lower) 2 eyebolts 2 rings 4 pseudo hinges 1 thread line between the two eyebolt ring assemblies (excluding bow lid) 1 draw line thread from center of assembly line through the port gutter to inside the hull (excluding bow lid) 2 pieces of mica for the two windows openings (backside of lid) White paint

The next two guns positions moving aft on my model will also have their lids closed, but their gun muzzles will be exposed poking through the lid opening. Their tampions will be painted red with a black star. Additionally, the first two gun ports from the stern will also be presented in this manner as well. Finally, the remaining guns will be in their firing positions with their lids opened, tampions removed, extending out of the ports, and fully rigged. This will present the guns in two positions which will reduce the number of gun positions that will require full rigging. The eight guns with tampions will be dummy guns having no trucks or rigging in view. Only their tampion covered muzzles will be in view.

Guns with Tampions Tampions are wooden muzzle stoppers. The first gun port starting at the bow does not have a gun as there is no room for one in the interior of the bow. As a result, the lids are usually kept closed and the muzzle opening is closed with a special tampion, which is a bit larger than the a muzzle tampion. This tampion is painted black with a red star in the center.

The staples were made from 0.032” music wire, close enough to the 1/32” (0.03125”) rod called out by the plans. Music wire was chosen because it won’t deform easily, and it’s dark in color. The wire was bent while in the grasp of a small vise and using a light hammer forming two 90° legs to the shape of a staple. The staples were glued into pre drilled holes in the hull.

Mooring Staples Here is an item that is easy to overlook on the plans, the mooring staples. There are three of them at the waterline on each side of the hull, near the stern, amidships, and the bow. I could not find a direct image of these staples, but I was able to get glimpses of them in some photos. From what little the photos showed, there was very little detail to them other than what is shown on the MS plans.

Mr. Hunt's practicums were/are critical in my two wooden ship builds. My first one Rattlesnake, I followed his instructions line by line as this was my first POB wooden square rigged ship.. As the build progressed, I noticed he was taking some short cuts which I didn't care for compared to other build logs. The second build, USS Constitution, is still ongoing after 5 years. Here, based on my experience with the Rattlesnake, I am using his practicum as a guide, along with checking out any and all build logs I can lay my hands on. I had gained enough confidence building Rattlesnake to attempt a scratch built gun deck on the USS Constitution. Mr. Hunt is not perfect and even he will say there other ways of doing things, so where I have deviated from his instructions, I explain why and what I did. Jon