CDR_Ret

Sails completed!

This reminds me of the steam-driven pile driver barge operated by the Lake Champlain Transportation (LCT) Company back in the day. I drove 100-ton-class car ferries for the company between Vermont and New York during my college years. Same thing in principle but different in the details. From what I recall 50 years ago, it was all-steel construction with a steam boiler under a deckhouse within the swivel cab and heavy composite hoses connected to the hammer driver cylinder. The company's work tug was propulsion. You could hear the pile driver working from miles away! The steam-engine crane (not sure you could call it a donkey engine) also pulled damaged pilings out. Very entertaining for the passengers when pulling a ferry into an adjacent slip!
 
[Edit: 7/15/24:] So as to not hijack Keith's topic any further, I'll post my marginally-relevant information here. I contacted LCT, and their Operations Manager was able to locate several photos of the steam crane I had mentioned in this post. Nothing too close up, but they provide an idea of an early-to-mid-1900's barge-mounted steam crane. The company's little work boat is also shown.

 
Terry

Eberhard, I do hope you carry out your driver project. I'd love following a build log by you on the subject. 
 
I've not enough sand left in the glass to justify buying a lathe now. I'm pretty cagy with a drill and I enjoy the challenge. Thank you for following along.
 
 
After aa page of comments I though it high time to provide POS. Nooo, not that POS, proof of sawdust.
 
 The hull 2.0 is close to having most of its elements attached. I'm not happy with the driver tower base so that'll get remade before making the hammer. The hammer needs to get made before the head log which adds a lot of stability. Once all the driver elements are added it'll be very sturdy.
 
 The hull measures 26 by 56 feet and the tower is 65 feet tall. The figure is to scale. When I worded on the pile driving crew I did not like climbing up to the head log. Heights is not my cuppa. 
  
 

 

 
 Thank you to all for the kind comments, the likes, and for taking the time to follow along.
 
  Keith

Weird! Almost word for word...

Strange. Is some kind of AI bot parroting my post? 

I gotta be honest, Keith.  When I first glanced at the title of this project I thought it read "Steaming Donkey Pile".   It really got me anxious to see what you were stepping in here.  I figured you might need to borrow @Knocklouder's character with the shovel.   

This reminds me of the steam-driven pile driver barge operated by the Lake Champlain Transportation (LCT) Company back in the day. I drove 100-ton-class car ferries for the company between Vermont and New York during my college years. Same thing in principle but different in the details. From what I recall 50 years ago, it was all-steel construction with a steam boiler under a deckhouse within the swivel cab and heavy composite hoses connected to the hammer driver cylinder. The company's work tug was propulsion. You could hear the pile driver working from miles away! The steam-engine crane (not sure you could call it a donkey engine) also pulled damaged pilings out. Very entertaining for the passengers when pulling a ferry into an adjacent slip!
 
[Edit: 7/15/24:] So as to not hijack Keith's topic any further, I'll post my marginally-relevant information here. I contacted LCT, and their Operations Manager was able to locate several photos of the steam crane I had mentioned in this post. Nothing too close up, but they provide an idea of an early-to-mid-1900's barge-mounted steam crane. The company's little work boat is also shown.

 
Terry

This reminds me of the steam-driven pile driver barge operated by the Lake Champlain Transportation (LCT) Company back in the day. I drove 100-ton-class car ferries for the company between Vermont and New York during my college years. Same thing in principle but different in the details. From what I recall 50 years ago, it was all-steel construction with a steam boiler under a deckhouse within the swivel cab and heavy composite hoses connected to the hammer driver cylinder. The company's work tug was propulsion. You could hear the pile driver working from miles away! The steam-engine crane (not sure you could call it a donkey engine) also pulled damaged pilings out. Very entertaining for the passengers when pulling a ferry into an adjacent slip!
 
[Edit: 7/15/24:] So as to not hijack Keith's topic any further, I'll post my marginally-relevant information here. I contacted LCT, and their Operations Manager was able to locate several photos of the steam crane I had mentioned in this post. Nothing too close up, but they provide an idea of an early-to-mid-1900's barge-mounted steam crane. The company's little work boat is also shown.

 
Terry

Anytime anyone mentions a steam donkey, I have to point out that John Dolbeer invented it for yarding redwood logs in my native Humboldt County, California.
 

Photo via The Humboldt Historian

This reminds me of the steam-driven pile driver barge operated by the Lake Champlain Transportation (LCT) Company back in the day. I drove 100-ton-class car ferries for the company between Vermont and New York during my college years. Same thing in principle but different in the details. From what I recall 50 years ago, it was all-steel construction with a steam boiler under a deckhouse within the swivel cab and heavy composite hoses connected to the hammer driver cylinder. The company's work tug was propulsion. You could hear the pile driver working from miles away! The steam-engine crane (not sure you could call it a donkey engine) also pulled damaged pilings out. Very entertaining for the passengers when pulling a ferry into an adjacent slip!
 
[Edit: 7/15/24:] So as to not hijack Keith's topic any further, I'll post my marginally-relevant information here. I contacted LCT, and their Operations Manager was able to locate several photos of the steam crane I had mentioned in this post. Nothing too close up, but they provide an idea of an early-to-mid-1900's barge-mounted steam crane. The company's little work boat is also shown.

 
Terry

This reminds me of the steam-driven pile driver barge operated by the Lake Champlain Transportation (LCT) Company back in the day. I drove 100-ton-class car ferries for the company between Vermont and New York during my college years. Same thing in principle but different in the details. From what I recall 50 years ago, it was all-steel construction with a steam boiler under a deckhouse within the swivel cab and heavy composite hoses connected to the hammer driver cylinder. The company's work tug was propulsion. You could hear the pile driver working from miles away! The steam-engine crane (not sure you could call it a donkey engine) also pulled damaged pilings out. Very entertaining for the passengers when pulling a ferry into an adjacent slip!
 
[Edit: 7/15/24:] So as to not hijack Keith's topic any further, I'll post my marginally-relevant information here. I contacted LCT, and their Operations Manager was able to locate several photos of the steam crane I had mentioned in this post. Nothing too close up, but they provide an idea of an early-to-mid-1900's barge-mounted steam crane. The company's little work boat is also shown.

 
Terry

This reminds me of the steam-driven pile driver barge operated by the Lake Champlain Transportation (LCT) Company back in the day. I drove 100-ton-class car ferries for the company between Vermont and New York during my college years. Same thing in principle but different in the details. From what I recall 50 years ago, it was all-steel construction with a steam boiler under a deckhouse within the swivel cab and heavy composite hoses connected to the hammer driver cylinder. The company's work tug was propulsion. You could hear the pile driver working from miles away! The steam-engine crane (not sure you could call it a donkey engine) also pulled damaged pilings out. Very entertaining for the passengers when pulling a ferry into an adjacent slip!
 
[Edit: 7/15/24:] So as to not hijack Keith's topic any further, I'll post my marginally-relevant information here. I contacted LCT, and their Operations Manager was able to locate several photos of the steam crane I had mentioned in this post. Nothing too close up, but they provide an idea of an early-to-mid-1900's barge-mounted steam crane. The company's little work boat is also shown.

 
Terry

This reminds me of the steam-driven pile driver barge operated by the Lake Champlain Transportation (LCT) Company back in the day. I drove 100-ton-class car ferries for the company between Vermont and New York during my college years. Same thing in principle but different in the details. From what I recall 50 years ago, it was all-steel construction with a steam boiler under a deckhouse within the swivel cab and heavy composite hoses connected to the hammer driver cylinder. The company's work tug was propulsion. You could hear the pile driver working from miles away! The steam-engine crane (not sure you could call it a donkey engine) also pulled damaged pilings out. Very entertaining for the passengers when pulling a ferry into an adjacent slip!
 
[Edit: 7/15/24:] So as to not hijack Keith's topic any further, I'll post my marginally-relevant information here. I contacted LCT, and their Operations Manager was able to locate several photos of the steam crane I had mentioned in this post. Nothing too close up, but they provide an idea of an early-to-mid-1900's barge-mounted steam crane. The company's little work boat is also shown.

 
Terry

It will also depend on the top-gear of the vessel, i.e. how many men one needs to bring into the mast quickly to take in sails.
 
On some ships the first or last shroud may also have been slackened in order to allow closer bracing-up of yards or to let booms swing out further.
 
However, I doubt that any useful information can be found for 16th century ships. Perhaps there are some paintings, but at this time painters were rarely that well informed about such details.
 

Idle hands are indeed the devil’s workshop, so it’s time to get busy on another SIB project.

My dear friend that had the major stroke last year suggested that I do a paddlewheel ship for my next build.  I told her that I only do sailing ships.  She told me to find a paddlewheel ship with sails.  DUH!

I didn’t even know if there was such a thing but figured I would start digging around and see what I could find.  Turns out that ships with paddlewheels and sails were not uncommon back in the mid-1800s during the long period of transition from sail to steam.  Apparently, the early steam engines that were used to turn the paddlewheels could be unreliable, so many of the ships were equipped with sails as a backup source of propulsion.  As I was reading about the various sail and steam ships from that mid-1800 period, one group of vessels in particular grabbed my attention – the daring blockade runners hired by the Confederacy that stealthily roamed the Atlantic and Gulf coasts during the U.S. Civil War.  

I like to build my ships with full sails (personal preference because I like how it looks) but it seemed like every picture I found of these sail and steam blockade runners did not have sails deployed.  I finally found one that did (the Ella Anne), so now I was ok with doing one of these blockade runner ships.
 
 
For those who may be interested, here’s a very brief history of the Confederate blockade runners and the one I chose as the subject for this SIB project.    
 
The Union Blockade
In the run-up to the U.S. Civil War, the Union army’s commanding general, Winfield Scott, devised a broad land and sea-based strategy for defeating the South.  It became known as the “Anaconda Plan” and was mocked by some pundits as “Scott’s Great Snake” for its vision of slowly squeezing the life out of the southern states rather than trying to hit the South hard and fast for a quick victory.

 
Shortly after the first shots were fired on Fort Sumner, in April 1861, Lincoln’s secretary of state William Henry Seward pressed for a naval blockade of southern ports used by the Confederate states.  Lincoln agreed and by July of 1861, while not fully adopting the Anaconda Plan, the Union Navy established a blockade.   The Union’s blockade focused first on the South’s Atlantic seaboard ports and effectively shut them down early in the war.  It was extended to the Florida keys and resulted in the South abandoning all major ports except for Mobile, Alabama, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Galveston, Texas.  New Orleans fell in April of 1862 and Mobile two years later.  Galveston remained the only major port defended and held by the South until the end of the war.
 
The Blockade Runners
The South had no real factories to produce machinery and weapons for the war.  But they did have cotton, which was of high value to Europe and especially England.  An unofficial partnership of sorts was formed between the Confederacy and England (who had an official stance of neutrality for the war).  Blockade running ships of British design were manufactured in British shipyards.  The ships were built for speed, with shallow drafts and steam power plants.
 
Privateers were hired to captain the ships.  The captains operated under a Letter of Marque granted by the Confederate government which authorized them to cross international orders and take action against attack or injury.  They made daring runs through the Union blockade to trade arms and supplies for cotton, thus providing key commerce for the South’s war effort.  Here are a couple of the typical blockade running ships – the Advance and the Teaser.

 
The Banshee II
In Gaelic legend, the Banshee is a female spirit whose shrieking or wailing warns of an impending death in a house.  

There were actually two blockade runners named Banshee that were used by the South during the war.  The original Banshee was a steel-hulled 533-ton side-wheel steamship built in Liverpool, England, in 1862.  It was the first ship designed specifically for penetrating the Union blockade and was the first ever steel-hulled ship to cross the Atlantic (over 200 more British-built blockade runners followed over the next 3 years).  After 8 successful blockade runs, the Banshee was captured in 1863 and converted to a Union gunboat.     

 
The Banshee II was launched in 1864 and considered state of the art in ship design.  Like her predecessor, she was built with a steel hull.  She was 252 feet long with a 31 foot beam, grossed 439 tons, and had a draft of only 11 feet at full weight.  The Banshee II was driven by two sidewheels and could achieve a remarkable 15 knots.  She was manned with English officers and Confederate pilots and crew.  As it was late in the war when the Banshee II entered the fray, her wartime naval career was short, consisting of a single run from Havana to Galveston and back.  But what her career lacked in duration, it made up for in excitement. 
 
She will be the subject for this SIB project.  

 
Galveston, Texas
Captained by Englishman Tom Taylor, The Banshee II left Havana, Cuba in March 1865 fully loaded with munitions and supplies for a blockade run to Galveston.  As the ship approached the Texas coast, Taylor described the first night and blockade encounter as such:

“It was a comparatively calm and very dark night, but within an hour all had changed and it commenced to blow a regular ‘Norther.’ Rain came down in torrents, then out of the inky blackness of clouds and rain came furious gusts, until a hurricane was blowing against which, notwithstanding that we were steaming at full speed, we made little or no way. Suddenly we made out some dark objects all around us, and found ourselves drifting helplessly among the ships of the blockading squadron, which were steaming hard to their anchors, and at one moment we were almost jostling two of them. Whether they knew what we were, or mistook us for one of themselves matters not; they were too much occupied about their own safety to attempt to interfere.”

Taylor allowed the Banshee II to drift clear of the Union fleet and drop anchor.  Later in the night, Taylor eased slowly up the coast till he caught sight of the blockade ships.  At daybreak, he ordered a risky but successful dash through the blockade.   Momentarily clear of the blockade and nearing the Texas coast, but still 11 miles from Galveston, the Banshee II developed mechanical problems and spent an anxious night effecting repairs just out of sight from Union ships.  Moments before sunrise, the Banshee II raised anchor and steamed forward towards Galveston Bay.  As daylight broke, Taylor found his ship in close quarters with the Union fleet.  They came under immediate fire and Taylor had to make a life or death decision – go for a short but perilous dash to the bay or bail out and head for the open waters of the Gulf.  He chose the perilous dash and described it like this:

“With two leadsmen in the chains we approached our fate, taking no notice of the bursting shells and round shot to which the blockaders treated us in their desperation. It was not a question of the fathoms but of the feet we were drawing: twelve feet, ten, nine, and when we put her at it, as you do a horse at a jump, and as her nose was entering the white water, ‘eight feet’ was sung out. A moment afterwards we touched and hung; and I thought all was over, when a big wave came rolling along and lifted our stern and the ship bodily with a crack which could be heard a quarter of a mile off, and which we thought meant that her back was broken.”

The Union fleet rained fire upon the Banshee II, but the rough waters around Galveston played havoc with their accuracy.  Miraculously, the Banshee II made it to the bay with only one crewman wounded and the ship suffering only from shell splinters.  Captain, crew, and ship received a hero’s welcome from much of the town that had gathered on the city’s wharf to watch the fireworks.  The Banshee II returned to Havana without incident, but by the time Captain Taylor reached the Cuban port, the War Between the States was over and the Banshee II’s military career came to an end.
 
In the next post, I’ll start getting into specifics of the SIB project.
 
 
 

I have a few reservations about the configuration of the ship as reconstructed - a little too low for its length compared with the (often extremely well-observed) contemprary representations of ships of this period, but that aside, it's a very nice video. Enjoy.
 
 
Steven
 
PS: A couple of other (fairly minor) criticisms - if they stored the barrels that way without tying them down they'd roll her over in the first bit of bad weather. And the 'pilot boat' that met her at Bristol would have been square-rigged, not lateen. Told you I was picky.
 

I don't even know what the parts are called yet; I've planked the hull but didn't do it alongside the back of the keel where it runs to the rudder. 
Sack the apprentice 😬
 

Hello from North Yorkshire! Just joined so I thought I'd put the kettle on - priorities of course. 
 
I've not built a model boat before, or anything out of wood so this place has been invaluable so far with my Billing boats Norden. 
 
It's a beginner's build for sure but going OK, apart from one gigantic mistake which I'll post a photo of soon. It's irreversible but I might get away with it if I lock it in a spare room... 
 
I'd like to say thank you for the inspiration so far and hope that I can emulate some of your skills in about 50 years time. 
 
Chat soon! 

The Big Reveal!
 
This one is as done as it's gonna get. It is not, in fact, as done as it could be, because I have made an informed decision to leave off some rigging lines that are both poorly documented in the kit diagrams and not well-attested in photos of either other models or real aircraft. Truth is, only die-hard purists may notice their absence. As I have hinted at before, this is not one of the better-designed kits I have worked on. There were many niggling omissions in the diagrams, which left many of the more nuanced construction bits pretty much up to the builder's imagination. I would give this kit a three out of five stars on the design and ease of assembly. The artwork, as I said at the beginning, is very nice and gives the model a good measure of 'curb appeal'. Enjoy the pictures!
 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A little more to report.  I have been experimenting to determine the best jig to solder these tiny pieces together.  The following show a very rough version of what I think I will try.  The principle seems OK but the jig needs a little 'finagling' and then to be remade in a denser wood before I dare attempt any soldering.  The brass PE parts have had holes drilled to accept the through mast bolts, but as is obvious, they need a lot more clean-up yet  
 
I am open to ideas to modify this jig before committing so please have at it.  The general idea is create 2 slots held in place at the width of the masthead flats.  The rim, which has yet to have the fore part of the rim soldered to it (see much earlier posts on this) then sits on top of them, and, after centering it, will somehow be held in place so that it does not move - I am still trying to sort that bit.  The final shot shows how it will be held in my soldering station when I get around to soldering.  
 
Then I have to think about how to put on the crosstrees with the iron rod (brass) stays pre-attached to the cross trees and the futtock band... but, that is a problem for 'future Pat' as the saying goes.
 
cheers
 
Pat
 

If you missed the live presentation, the video of this workshop will be up on the NRG website soon.  If you weren't an NRG member at the time, join now and you, too, can see the presentation of that workshop and other previous NRG workshops!

And another short update.... Front firewall, progress report...
 
Front...

Only about halfway there on the engine side, I will probably have to wait for the clutch pedal creation to cut the slot for it in the firewall..
 
Current state of Cockpit side...

What your looking at is the wooden foundation of the steering gears, yes, they are built up wood blocks with holes cut thru them to reach the fixture supporting the gears themselves... The wood forms the inner layers between the metal firewall and cast gear fixture...
 
About to start designing the side walls and braces, they need to be done now cause the angle of the steering gears needs to be fixed..... Also, the sidewalls are different from left side to right side... (today, they would be identical mirrors of each other, nothing easy about this thing)....
 
Anyway I haven't left, I'm still here plugging away...
 
Onwards...
 
 
 

It should be clarified at once that this plan, tentatively dated by me to the end of the 17th century, is one of the last of the era before the widespread adoption of design diagonals, which in the Netherlands occurred in the third decade of the 18th century at the latest (see as to this Ab Hoving & Alan Lemmers, In Tekening Gebracht. De achttiende-eeuwse scheepsbouwers en hun ontwerpmethoden, 2001). In historical terms, this is the period of the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–1674), the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–1697) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714).
 
As it seems, this very plan was not previously widely known and was kindly provided to me for examination, in terms of the design method used, by Ab Hoving. This is an exceptionally fortunate circumstance for several reasons, and I am most pleased that it demonstrates classical prediagonal design methods in their latest, most advanced form and for the most demanding projects, that is of a dedicated warships.
It is apparent at first glance that conceptually this is a more sophisticated design compared to the civilian designs presented so far (Samuel 1650, Witsen’s pinas 1671, Rålamb's boyer & fluit 1691), while it is more similar in this sense to the Dutch capital ship ca. 1665 (Hohenzollern model), the French (Atlantic) heavy frigate design by Chaillé 1686 and the designs of 1679 by Hubacs of Dutch origin, boasting dozens of designed and built ships to their credit.
 
* * *
 
The primary aim of the project will not even be to search for all the (main) proportions of the design parameters, as many of them were quite arbitrary (as they still are today), but rather to search for more universal procedures applied for shaping the body of the hull, quite independent of these proportions.
 
The plan (Archives of the Nederlandsche Marine):
 

 
 
The drawing is originally captioned: Frigate ship long between posts 165 feet for 72 guns [seen] from inside.
 
Contrary to this caption, this is a design for a ship 156 feet long, not 165 feet, as indicated by the size of linear scale (30 feet long; a foot divided into 11 inches), and according to the metric scale added nowadays, the plan was drawn at a scale of 1 inch = 5 feet 7 inches, or 1:62.
 
At this scale, the drawn ship measures 156 x 42 x 15 feet (length x breadth x depth in hold), which corresponds fairly well to the dimensions of almost the entire, long series of 28 2nd rate ships built under the 1685 programme.
 
As one would expect from a dedicated warship, the hull has quite a sharp entry, as well as overall shape compared to merchantmen designs. In design practice, this is achieved primarily by increasing the height of the deadrise, or in other words, the line of the floor. According to the design method and customs, only the leading (conceptual) frames are pre-designed. The shape of the remaining, filling frames, could be or had to be (especially at both extremities of the hull) determined according to the ribbands, already installed during the actual construction.
 
However, not to rule out any possibility, it is also possible that the drawn linear scale is out of sync with the rest of the drawing and, in addition, slightly longer than it should be, and that the ship length of 165 feet, given in the caption, is correct. In that case, the scale of the drawing would be 1:66 and the hull breadth would be 44 1/2 feet (giving in this way, for example, the dimensions of Gouda 1719, built in Amsterdam by van Reenen).
 
This does not really change the essence of the project (recognition of the design method), and in the context of the dating and design practices of the time, it may be indicative of the repeated use of the same designs to build ships of different sizes. To put it another way, the plan may have been drawn at a scale of about 1:62 as for a 156-foot ship, and after the scale change, it became the design for a 165-foot ship.
 
 
Keel assembly & longitudinal division
 
Note: some of the dimensions below are actually redundant, but have nevertheless been left on the diagram for better readability.
 
* * *
 
The keel has been drawn quite realistically – on the plan it has a deflection with the greatest value at the forward master frame, amounting to 1/3 of the keel height, and is tapered towards the stern to 4/5 of the total height. The stempost rake is very small, being only 4 x sternpost rake (measured to the supposed rabbet line). As late as 1737, the French shipwright-designer Blaise Ollivier reported that on Dutch ships it was usually larger, 6 x sternpost rake.
 
To determine the position of the leading (conceptual) frames, the ship was divided into nine equal parts. For the fore part of the ship an additional division of four parts has been set up.
 
The contours of the 'virtual' single master frame are not even defined on the body plan, nevertheless the position of this frame is essential in this design to establish the nominal (largest) values of all narrowing lines (breadths/widths) on the plan view. To put it another way, it is this actually unbuilt in real construction, single 'virtual' master frame that is widest at all levels – at the 'flat' level, at the level of the line of greatest breadth and at the level of the toplines that define the upperworks. Its lengthwise placement have been chosen in such a way that it falls at 1/3 of the keel length.
 
For the construction of the physical ship in real scale, two 'twin' master frames were defined. The fore master frame falls at 1/3 of the length of the entire hull, and the aft master frame at an equal distance from the single 'virtual' master frame (see diagram). By design, the contours of these twin master frames are not quite identical, the largest difference being about 1/4 foot, nevertheless similar enough that in carpentry shipbuilding practice they could be treated as identical without much detriment to the quality of the end result in terms of its conformity with the design.
 
The diagram also indicates the likely placement of the two quarter frames. From these positions, going towards both extremities of the hull, the contours of the frames already have a different geometric structure compared to the central frames between these quarter frames.
 

 
 
Main design lines (rising & narrowing curves)
 
It must be said at the outset that the shape of all the elliptical lines in this design, obtained by means of the popular geometrical transformation called mezzaluna, and employed in its numerous variations, is so closely coincident with the ideal shape of the arc of a circle that it is almost certain that the use of these elliptical curves was merely the result of the designer's lack of a compass of sufficiently huge size, rather than a deliberate effort to obtain some particular curvature different from the ideal circular arc. In drawing practice, it was in this way that a number of points lying on the desired curve were determined, and these points were then connected using drawing instruments – either templates of fixed curvature or battens of variable curvature adjustable by a screw or string.
 
* * *
 
Line of the floor (green)
 
This is essentially the most important design line for any ship of the period. At the main frame, the deadrise is large, appropriate for warships, 1.5 feet measured from a realistically curved keel, giving an inclination of 1:8.75 in relation to half the floor width. The total width of the floor almost matches the 'standard' value of 2/3 of the hull breadth, and in this particular case is 5/8 of the breadth. At the stern, the line of the floor terminates normally at the height of tuck (where the fashion pieces join the sternpost), At the bow, at the intersection with the rabbet line, the height of this line is not great, however, the sharp gripe is still obtained by the specific way in which the bow frames are formed, different from the central frames.
 
In the vertical plane (sheer view), the lowest point of the floor line is at the fore master frame, while in the horizontal plane (plan view), the greatest width of this line falls already in a different place – at the single "virtual" master frame. The section between the single "virtual" master frame and the fore master frame is a mirror image of the corresponding section of this line from the aft side. Both observations also apply to all other design lines.
 
After examining several cases from the era, I can probably say that the curvature type of the line of the floor is very characteristic of Dutch designs, i.e. a logarithmic curve for the fore part of the hull and a (supposed) circular arc for the aft part.
 
Line of the greatest breadth (blue)
 
Apart from the (quite accurate) approximation of this line to the arc of a circle using a mezzaluna, this line does not differ in any way from the standard in terms of the way it is drawn. However, it is possible to point out the relatively quite significant height of this line at the master frame (almost 4 feet), with the effect of increasing the transverse stiffness of the ship and thus enabling the lowering of the gun ports (and therefore the rest of the above-water part of the hull for better weatherliness), and also the noticeably sharper shapes of this line at the bow (in top view) compared to merchantmen, for greater speed.
 
Lines relating to the upperworks (violet)
 
The same concern for improving weatherliness by lowering the height of the upperworks is also visible in the case of the toplines – at the fore part of the ship they are lowered by about half a foot compared to the aft part of the hull. In the top view, the designer partially spoiled these lines (or just ignored some of them while drawing the frame contours), especially in the stern part, which is not surprising considering that these were the least important elements of the design. As a consequence, their run in the top view on the below diagram was partially corrected based on the frame contours. Also, in these circumstances, the lowest of the three toplines is not necessary at all to define the shapes of the upperworks (and even harmful), because the designer, when drawing the frame contours, used a different method to determine the radii of the upper breadth sweeps anyway, i.e. based on the respective frame widths.
 

 
 
Perfect shapes in the sense of geometric smoothness. And without any correction with diagonals and waterlines whatsoever! Just the correct formation of the frames. Yet, there is something else incomparably more important, about which later.
 
Now, just that this plan is a real, unique gem with probably no equivalent, because it shows the true, advanced engineering face of Dutch shipbuilding of the Ruyter era, and hitherto hidden behind the façade of Witsen's and van Yk's essentially carpentry-oriented works, both touching hardly on conceptual design issues, unlike, for example, their English contemporaries in the field.
 
Before continuing properly, a bit of fun with the renderings. I am constantly amazed at how perfectly smooth the hull lines have been achieved by the designer through the skilful selection of the individual sweeps radii for all the consecutive frames.
 
Gun ports are not evenly spaced, most likely for structural reasons (knees, beams, hatches etc.). In some of the renders, the ship has been trimmed four feet aft.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
Well, now there's bound to be a Nobel Prize 🙂. It was enough to look at something else than the works of Witsen and van Yk themselves (these, although unrivalled in structural and carpentry aspects, are nevertheless extremely poor in terms of design methods). It was also enough to finally break with the uncritical endorsement of modern studies by academic fellowship, displaying a notorious tendency to conformistically rewrite increasingly inadequate and anachronistic theses from each other's 'official' publications, and to look directly at the sources without such mediation.
 
But to the point.
 
Analysing the shapes of the frames on this plan, I finally uncovered that not one but two lines of the floor were used in this design, nevertheless, for some reason, the second one was not drawn at all on the sheer view (or was later erased). This undrawn/erased line of the floor (in black on the diagram) was used for fixing the lower edges of bilge sweeps. In contrast, the one left on the original drawing (green in the diagram) shapes the bottom of the hull and also materialises the edge of the 'flat', as the ship was intended to be built using the bottom-first method. They have both the same deadrise at the fore master frame.
Among other source indications, this plan is one of the most important pieces of evidence that the leading frames (could) have been pre-designed in their entirety also in this very method (i.e. bottom-first), especially for more complex warship designs. Both of these lines are used in a different way to their counterparts in the Mediterranean/English tradition.
 

 
 
The way in which the contours of the frames are formed is shown in the graphic below. Apart from the frames at the hulls's extremities, i.e. #1 and #9, the order is as follows:
 
– first a line of the „flat” connecting the keel to a point on the line of the floor of the "flat" (green colour),
– then a futtock sweep with a radius of 3/4 x the respective frame breadth,
– then a bilge sweep tangent to the futtock sweep and tangent to the level of the second line of the floor (black colour),
– then a reconciling sweep with a fixed radius of 2/3 x max. breath, joining the bilge sweep and the line of the „flat”, tangentially on both sides,
– finally an upper breadth sweep with a radius of 1/4 x resp. frame breadth and a toptimber sweep in accordance with the longitudinal lines defining the upperworks (violet).
 

 
 
For all frames, the individual sweeps have the following parameters:
 

 
 
Thank you for your attention,

Waldemar Gurgul

There's really no substitute for careful research, and I must admit with chagrin that there's no substitute for carefully double-checking somebody else's research before posting an answer to any question posed, especially when I'm not readily familiar with the vessel in question!  
 
The repeated reference to these two French naval vessels, Turenne and Bayard, as "ironclads" kept niggling at me because it appeared to me that they were built later than the so called "ironclad" period and were of a style similarly advanced beyond the "ironclad" period. So I finally spent a moment to see if I could find anything on line about either of them and, sure enough, there were Wikipedia pages for both vessels and their named "Bayard class." (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard- class_ironclad ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Turenne ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Bayard )
 
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From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard- class_ironclad
 
Unlike several of their French predecessors, the Bayard-class ships disposed with iron hulls and reverted to wooden hulls, which were sheathed in copper to reduce fouling on extended voyages overseas, where shipyard facilities were less available. This may have been the result of British reports of hull corrosion with their iron-hulled vessels.
…
The ships were protected with wrought iron armor; their belt was 250 mm (9.8 in) thick amidships, where it protected the ships' propulsion machinery spaces and ammunition magazines. The belt extended for the entire length of the hull, but toward the bow it reduced in thickness to 180 mm (7.1 in), and at the stern, it was reduced to 150 mm (5.9 in). The belt extended from 0.91 m (3 ft) above the waterline to 1.99 m (6 ft 6 in) below.
 
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Note for openers that these wooden-hulled ships "...were sheathed with copper to reduce fouling on extended voyages overseas, where shipyard facilities were less available." We should recognize from the outset then that the converse is also true: they weren't sheathed with copper when not on an extended voyage overseas where shipyard facilities were available. The fact that these French wooden ironclads weren't always copper-sheathed is confirmed by what we know of Atalante, discussed hereafter. Apparently, sometimes they were and sometimes they weren't. If one is modeling a particular such vessel at a particular time in its service life, at least a serious attempt to ascertain whether or not she was copper-sheathed at that time is required. Is there a log, diary, or maintenance report or receipt in a dusty file somewhere? If not, what's the "best estimate" one can make? If depicted when the vessel was on station in French Indochina, there's at least evidence to support your assuming she was not being coppered at that place in time in the absence of contrary evidence. (Just sayin'.  )
 
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These vessels carried a ten inch thick wrought iron armor belt which extended 3 feet above the waterline and 6.5 feet below the waterline. Considering the mechanical and galvanic issues attendant to sheathing wrought iron with copper plate, we can conclude that these vessels were only metal-sheathed to protect the wooden hull exposed below the waterline, i.e., from six and a half feet below the waterline on down. There isn't ever going to be any verdigris color at the waterline of any of these wooden vessels with nine and a half foot wide belts of wrought iron around their waterlines.
 
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From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntz_metal:
 
(Muntz metal's) original application was as a replacement for copper sheathing on the bottom of boats, as it maintained the anti-fouling abilities of the pure copper at around two thirds of the price. It became the material of choice for this application and Muntz made his fortune. It was found that copper would gradually leach from the alloy in sea water, poisoning any organism that attempted to attach itself to a hull sheathed in the metal.
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Muntz metal, was patented in 1832 in England, and England and France were allies at the time of the Bayard class' service. Pending certain confirmation which should be easily accomplished by further research, it is reasonable to presume that the "copper sheathing" on these vessels was actually Muntz metal, rather than pure copper. This would result in a "yellow metal" that would be somewhat "yellower" than pure copper.
 
Below: Newly ("virgin") Muntz metal sheathed hull of Cutty Sark following her recent restoration and isolation from the elements in her new partially covered dry dock display building: 
 

By Cmglee - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19898346
 
While metal sheathing provides an effective mechanical barrier to marine borers, it is not as effective at preventing the growth of vegetative fouling which attaches itself to submerged surfaces. Additionally, with the advent of iron-hulled ships which could not be sheathed with copper-based metals due to difficulties with attaching such sheathing and, more significantly, the galvanic dissimilarities between iron and copper which caused severe electrolytic corrosion, a large number of anti-fouling paints and other coatings were developed in the late 19th century and were widely in use by the time of the Bayard class' service. The most successful, and therefore most widely used, of these anti-fouling paints had the now-familiar "bottom paint red" color owing to the copper they contained. Again pending certain confirmation which should be easily accomplished by further research, it is reasonable to presume that at least the nine and a half foot wide wrought iron armor plate armor belt at the waterline of the two Bayard class vessels was painted with anti-fouling paint of a color common at the time. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fouling_paint and https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling )
 
A review of related contemporary black and white photographs, colored paintings, colored contemporary postcards, and color photographs of contemporary museum models available online appears to confirm that French iron and wooden warships of the Bayard-class' time, at least to the bottoms of their iron armor belts, were apparently painted with anti-fouling paint and that if they were wooden, were, in some cases when at sea for long periods and away from dry-docking facilities, sheathed in Muntz metal (or possibly zinc plate) which may, or may not have been also painted with anti-fouling coating of a "bottom paint red" (or possibly a light grey color. A copper sulfate anti-fouling coating called "Italian Moravian" was also highly regarded at the time of the Bayard-class. It was reputed to be expensive and difficult to apply. I do not know its color. Here again, more research is required.  Some brief experimentation was also conducted with sheet zinc plating instead of copper or Muntz metal over iron, owing to zinc's greater compatibility with iron on the galvanic scale. Zinc sheet metal would appear as a flat silver-grey ("galvanized") color. Some colored contemporary postcards do clearly show a bottoms of such color. See: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1952/july/history-prevention-fouling  
 
For visual data, search Google images: "French Bayard Class ironclads." Some excerpts below. Englarge the photographs to see greater detail:
 
Two photos below: Contemporary hand colored photographs of French ironclads:
 

 

 
Below: Watercolor painting of contemporary iron French naval vessels:

 
Below: From a presumably well-researched modern Eastern European modeling source:
 

 
Below:  Model of Alma-class Jeanne d'Arc on display at the Musee de la Marine in Paris. She was a contemporary of the Bayard-class ships and of identical French ironclad wooden construction as Turenne with a wrought iron armor belt at the waterline. Note armor belt above and below white painted waterline which from other contemporary pictorial documentation appears to be a common feature of French naval livery at that time. Note "Muntz metal" brass-colored metal sheathing below the armor plate and similar "bronze" colored ram edge at the bow. (These bronze rams were not merely a metal covering, but actually an integral structural member of the hull.) Bright sheathing color results from model's "new as built" depiction style. (Alternately identified by other sources as sistership Alma-class ironclad Armide.) (Blue color of possibly dark grey topsides is apparently a photographic lighting artifact.)
 
 
 
Below: Black and white contemporary photograph of similar French ironclad naval vessel showing slightly visible top line of armor belt.
 

 
Below: It appears the white waterline accent line  (AKA: "boot stripe") appears again suggesting it was a regulation livery detail.
 

 
Below: Additional French ironclads of the Bayard-class era from a modern Eastern European modeling source indicating standard French navy livery:
 

 
 
Below: 1860's Alma-class wooden ironclad Atalante, sister to Jeanne d'Arc, a contemporary "as built" model of which is pictured above.  This class' service period overlapped the wooden Bayard-class', particularly given that the latter was an intentional nearly identical "throwback" to the Alma-class' wooden ironclad construction details.
 
Atalante is here photographed in the Fitzroy Dock, Sidney Harbor in 1873. She spent a large portion of her service life on the French Indo-China Station. She bombarded Vietnamese forts during the Battle of Thuan in 1884 and participated in the Sino-French Indo-China War of 1884–1885. She was reduced to reserve in Saigon, French Indochina, in 1885 and sank there two years later after having been condemned. 
 
Note top of her armor belt at the level of the heads of the workmen standing on the staging platform with approximately the two top feet of the armor belt painted black as are the topsides (i.e., down to the workers' waists) with anti-fouling bottom paint being applied below that line, resulting in bottom paint beginning approximately a foot or two above the waterline and continuing down to cover the the lower part of the armor belt and the rest of the underwater hull below the staging platform. (Enlarge photo for greater detail.) 
 

 
Below: Contemporary colored drawing of Alma-class wooden ironclad Atalante from the glass plate negative above, but depicting the appearance of the hull after the bottom painting was done and she was ready for launching! (Quite a lot to discover from these two views on account of that difference!) Note the "bottom paint red" anti-fouling paint being applied from approximately a couple of feet below the top of the armor belt on downwards to cover the submerged part of the armor belt and on down to include the wooden bottom. Note also the white "bootstripe" accent line at the top of the armor belt and the (subtle) lining above and below the armor belt depicting the wooden planking of the topsides and unsheathed bottom of the wooden hull, contrasted with the smooth wrought plates of the armor belt. As this picture confirms, it appears that the not-inconsiderable expense of metal sheathing of her wooden bottom was deemed unnecessary as she had adequate dry-docking facilities available in her station area. 
 

 
 
 
I didn't reach the same conclusion as you when examining the photos you posted. You'll find a clearer version of your photo of Turenne at her Wikipedia entry: See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard-class_ironclad#/media/File:French_ironclad_Turenne_NH_66099.jpg  This photo will enlarge a lot without losing definition. ("Left mouse click once." Love these old glass plate negatives!) For some reason, the French Navy of the period seems to have frequently photographed their ships while they were getting painted. I have no idea why, but it's uncanny when you look at so many of them that have painting details at work. If you enlarge this photo from the Wiki page, and examine the stern quarter, you'll see painters on staging painting the topsides white. If you then examine  the bow area, you'll see that they've just painted the bow area, (including the anchors and chain rodes!) and what you apparently took to be "...what looks like verdigris on copper plating on bows..." and "...a clear patina there on a ship that's made a voyage from Toulon to somewhere in China station." Look again. What you're seeing there is the aftermath of a rather sloppy recent paint job. If you had spent time around shipyards, you'd probably have recognized it for what it was as soon as you saw it. Sailors are notoriously sloppy painters. They're painting to protect the metal first and foremost. They really don't care a whole lot what the job looks like from 100 yards, which is as much as most people will ever see. 
 
As for the second picture, we know that's not "shiny copper" because that's where the wrought iron armor belt is and there's no way they're going to copper-sheath wrought iron armor plate. It certainly was tried unsuccessfully at the time iron ships first came into use, trying to separate the dissimilar metals with felt or wooden furring strips, but that was long before the time of the vessel pictured. I believe what we see in that photo is simply an over-exposure "flash" that could sometimes occur with reflected light off the water and onto the white surfaces given the limitations of the photographic technology of those times. 
 
 

By Unknown, Farenholt collection - history.navy.mil, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=142143958
 
I don't think today's younger modelers who began building ship models in the "Internet Age" can begin to appreciate the value of digital research to the hobby. Before the internet, I doubt there was anything more than possibly a book or three, long out of print and near impossible to obtain, written in French, that would have any information whatsoever about these ships. Obtaining the information posted here would have likely required a trip to France and days of searching museum archives, if they'd allow you to do so and, in the days before digital photography, copying a photograph would be a major undertaking and copying a construction drawing would require days of tedious tracing at a drafting table by a skilled draftsman, again if they'd allow you to touch the original. Now, modeling research is often only "a few clicks away!" On the other hand, such a resource has made it all the more important to conduct meticulous research because errors nobody would ever notice before are so much more easily noticed with the so much more accurate information available today. 
 

During many years of model building I have built many more models in my head than on the workbench.  A result of one of my mental exercises:
 
It seems to me that coppering a hull with real copper is a weak link in the modeling process.  Gluing copper over a wood substrate is problematic as both  Rubber cements and pressure sensitive adhesives have doubtful longevity.  Nothing is more discouraging for corners of plates on a tediously coppered hull to begin lifting up.  Then as Bob Cleek points out there is the scale factor.  If you are building at a scale of 1:100 scale thickness of the copper could be .001in or less thick.
 
I would suggest that you instead use plates cut from thin paper.  These can be glued on with any good wood glue including PVA.  You can paint the plated hull as needed.  An airbrush would work well for simulating different weathering effects.
 
Roger