CDR_Ret

I second the suggestion that a hard look at the PNW be made.   Aside from Bremerton, which has historic ship museums, an undersea museum as well as a healthy maritime tradition it also has the Center for Wooden Boats, the School of Wooden Boat Building and the annual Wooden Boat Festival.  Im positive a location could be had at reasonable prices with choice accommodation collocated.    I also live here...  which is a bonus for me :).

Each mast is raked at different angles and there is a bit of adjustment possible on the real ship with the mast partners and wedge ring.  You can see the angles on contemporary plans and models.  There are 10 contemporary low resolution plans of Terror 1813 in the RMG Collections site. https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-85464 and many of them in high resolution on the Wiki Commons site on page 17   Go to 
  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ship_plans_of_the_Royal_Museums_Greenwich  and then go to page 17.    If accuracy is of interest, study all of the drawings as they are a wealth of information.  See below for mast angles.   
Allan

Thanks Eberhard, appreciate your time looking.  Pity there isn't as much info available in contemporary literature.  As you say, it should have been somewhat standardised by 1855.  Thhe tid-bit on short-link chain on rollers is useful.
 
The reason I ask, is that Victoria used chain for the tye (among other rigging that ran through blocks).  For the topmast, gin blocks were specified for the chain tye in the Rigging Warrant, but no blocks are listed against chain for the topgallant tye.  This infers a tye sheave cut into the mast at the topgallant stop.  BUT as chain needs a wider sheave, and the mast diameter at this point is only 5.3" diameter, that would seriously weaken the mast.  The chain is specified at 9/16" wire diameter but I would really like to find a rule of thumb for the chain width and for the slot.    Fincham provides a rule of thumb for slot length (1 and 1/6) sheave diameter but I can find nothing on width for rope or for chain except for a comment by Fincham that the sheave for chain is shallower in the groove, bigger in the mouth and overall wider than for a rope sheave pully.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Maybe it works better in the northern hemisphere where it was made😁😁  bath drain effect 😁

Interesting approach to the problem of adding bulwarks. Looks like it worked very well, Pat.

Added a few fiddly bits, I think it's pretty much done.
 


 
And about how it fits in Lapwing:
 

Thank you for all your kind remarks. I’ve been taking photos with my phone as I’ve been building, but because of deteriorating eyesight I have only visited this forum on my computer or ipad, so will have to figure out how to post from my phone, which may take a while since neither cell phone use nor social media are among my few strengths. But I’ll do my best. I have been following the work of many of you for months now, and already owe you all a considerable debt, so I’m very much looking forward to sharing with you! Thanks again for the welcome!

Hello everyone!
 
I am a new member from land-locked Utah (presently, at least), but have lived on both coasts. As I mentioned in my profile post, I am a university professor and professional artist, and have extensive experience in construction, carpentry, and woodworking. I have been building models since I was very young, almost always modifying them and often scratch-building them.
Life in miniature is a constant source of fascination for me. Probably my most ambitious project was a scale model of the Verazzano-Narrows bridge I scratchbuilt as a 15-year-old out of wood, metal, and heavy thread—from plans I drew myself with the help of library books and long-distance snail-mail correspondence with some very kind and patient engineers. 
 
I started a wooden ship model (a Bluenose) years ago, but soon realized that I lacked the knowledge to build it well, and doing anything halfway is not in my nature. “If something is worth doing, it is worth doing to excess” is the dictum that rules my life, much to my family’s frustration at times. So, I returned to building scale airplanes until I could acquire the necessary skills for ship modeling. In the meantime, I learned to sail and have spent years reading books (and lately forums) on ships and model shipbuilding (and am thus familiar with some of your names from your plans, designs, and publications—and am grateful for the learning you have generously shared!). As I am now nearing retirement, I’ve been actively perusing this forum and model-building again for about 6 months (starting with the excellent Model Shipways shipwright kits,) and feel I am ready to start posting (assuming that I can learn to navigate the bewildering technicalities of an online forum).
 
I look forward to “meeting” you all, drawing on your experience, and hopefully contributing one or two things that might prove helpful to others. Thank you in advance for your friendship!

Hello 3DShipwright,
Thank you very much for your invitation,  I am deeply impressed by your work. 
As a builder of the MSW kit I am highly interested in your project and look forward to your progress.
 
Best regards 
 
Werner  

Inviting @wernerweiss and @WalrusGuy as other current Confederacy builders if they'd like to weigh in.
 
So yes, American frigates, specifically the Confederacy - were/was quite different than anything else out there at the time. The 'why' these choices were made is actually kind of ironic. But in historical context, they make perfect sense.
 
A few years back, @mtaylorshared an excellent link to letters of correspondence between Confederacy's shipwright and the Continental Congress that shed light on her design and build. For the life of me, I can't seem to find his post again, so I'm paraphrasing from memory here as well as some inferences I drew from the text:
 
1. Most 'American' (I'm using quotes because the notion of America as a country was in dispute at the time lol) shipwrights were trained in service of the Royal Navy, but when war broke out, they were cut off from the design resources and structure of the British Admiralty. This was both good and bad. On one hand, they were free to break status quo and experiment with more modern techniques, such as Chapman's works, but also the Swiss mathematicians, Bernoulli and Euler.
 
2. America had superior lumber (specifically species of live oak and other greenwoods), but inferior or simply less availability to copper. In 1781 the American Navy finally followed suit of the English and mandated that all military vessels be lined with copper. However, that's not to suggest they didn't understand it's importance well before that, and my guess is confederacy was intended to be sheathed.
 
3. Confederacy can best be described as an overly ambitious project and an un-realized dream. At a time when the American Navy had a grand total of 6 warships and a handful of repurposed sloops, the Confederacy was to be the Flagship of the new nation. She was ornate, featured dozens of hand-sculpted carvings, and was stylized in an Italian sub-set of Neo-classical architecture, known as Palladian style.
 
4. BUT - not only did she repeatedly run out of funding, when the build inevitably ran over schedule, she was rushed out to sea. So instead of a copper hull, she got one of white oak, poorly painted white. In the cold waters of the North Atlantic, white-bottom hulls could stave off large quantities of marine growth. However, a single trip to the Caribbean, the pesky teledo worm had bored enough holes in her hull that wood rot consumed her greenwood framing within a few months.  Finally, instead of 38 large caliber guns and several carronades, she left port with 28, comprised solely of 12pdrs and 6 prds.
 
As I promised my build of her would be as close to historically accurate as possible, I intend to show her [paraphrased]
 
"Prepped for copper but hastily white-washed below the wale, black wale and top-section, red internal planks, a hull above the wale of 'natural ochre', trims of red, white and blue, and carvings of natural wood." That's a surprising amount of color, and means the typical yellow, black and red as seen on the MSW kit is not actually correct, but to be fair, I don't know if those letters were publicly available when they came out with the kit.

I’d challenge anyone to say that ten times in a row without slipping lol
 
Progress looking good!

Main head rails, cheeks, bolster plates, and the beakneck bulkhead (love saying that, lol) in place.
 

Such an interesting topic on solid hull building. Bob Cleek hit the nail on the head with the lack of manual skills taught in todays schools. I asked my grandson about  his courses in high school and asked him if he has ever had a shop class or mechanical drawing class and he said "what is that"? It's disturbing to me to hear that.
 
As a new modeler, I chose my second build, Bluejackets Smuggler, which is a solid hull kit.  Every step of the way has been a challenge, from becoming reacquainted with blueprints,  to using old drafting skills with old tools learned 50 years ago in high school, to which tools work the best for shaping. Measuring and laying out stations, finding the centerline, becoming frustrated with mistakes but learning from those mistakes. Slowly figuring things out. This to me is the beauty of creating something. I may want to plank the deck on Smuggler, just to learn another skill. We'll see. I'm  learning something new every day from everyone here. At my pace, I should be done with Smuggler in about 5 years...
 
 
 
 

A few current screen captures:
 

At this time I am fairly new to both wooden ship building and MSW. As such this is possibly a risky post as I might be either preaching to the converted or just plain wrong.
Although having completed just three builds, I have no doubt that the journey becomes akin to “wood engineering”. I have two 1/48 scale builds on the go and am committed to trying to work within +/- 0.5mm which equals about an inch in real world. I’d be interested if anyone can quote records with regard to accuracy of the day in the early 19th century.
 
Enough of the post introduction and on the the meat of the subject;
I have not seen much use so far for this tool on MSW but I feel it is under utilised. I see lots of spirit levels but sometimes think the user may not be getting the results they believe they are.

 
My two current builds have been set up on build boards made from spare kitchen cabinet panels. They are very flat and as spare, also very cheap. The top surface of the build board then becomes the datum. You don’t need to worry if your fixed work surface/table isn’t flat or level, just work from your build board datum. I think with a little experience it is easy to work within 0.2mm or 0.008”.
 

The tool has different names depending who tells or sells it. To me it was a scribing block used for marking out but it could be a simple height gauge or comparator. You could attach a dial indicator (known as a clock) or just a simple scribe as I have.
Above it is being used to adjust the heights of the bulwarks. In this instance I am not setting a known height, just matching the height of starboard and port.
 
This next picture I am matching gun port heights. Using the fine adjustment screw whilst moving the scribes point back and forth across the gun port until a touch is felt/heard. You then slide your scribe block to the opposite side and set your wood height accordingly. You will find you are quickly working within very fine tolerances without effort. 

 
The following picture looks to show a point I am trying to make. I have tilted my build board by an inch or so. Tilting it makes it easier to see the laser etch marks used as guides on the gun ports. Using a spirit level in this instance would be inappropriate here, but the scribing block method still works the same.
 

 
If you are building a flat keel model you can use the scribe block to set known heights from plans using an engineers rule or slip gauges to set the height. This takes a bit more effort if you are working on a curved keel model..
 
These scribe blocks are available for around £35 or $40. I’ll leave you to decide if that seems a worthwhile investment. If so, I would add a couple of caveats;
1. As per norm, make sure stem and stern are vertical to the build board.
2. That the build board is wide and long enough to move the scribe block around the model.
 
Now, If you have taken the time to read all that, thanks
 
Paul

Oh yes, a "surface height gauge," as it seems to be called here on our side of the Pond, is a very handy thing to have, as your post has very well illustrated. In recent times, the simple "manual comparitor" models seems to have become less common. Most marketed now have the capacity to measure with a digital readout to a high level of tolerance and some even have provision for a cable connection for a CNC input. These guys cost two or three grand! The simple model you have is one of those things I'd love to snag at a garage sale, but I haven't seen one in a long time. Alternately, I use my dial indicator stand with a sharpened rod inserted in the hole for mounting the "clock" or I just take a suitably-sized block of wood and shim a sharp pencil on top of the block to the desired height and slap a piece of tape over it. Not what you'd call "highly accurate," but, as they say, "close enough for government work."
 
(Beautiful photos on your post, by the way! I'm sure a lot of the newer modelers will find your information very helpful! 
 
 
 
 

Here is the article in PDF format for everyone who does not have access to it.
 
Have a great day!
 
The legend lives on_ World-class model of Edmund Fitzgerald drops anchor in Ashland _ Local _ apg-wi.com.pdf

Thank you very much Montaigne. It would have been difficult to explain it more clearly, and I read it with interest myself 🙂.
 
* * *
 
While the royal coat of arms on the stern has all the heraldic elements (i.e. the emblems of the two kingdoms, Poland-Lithuania and Sweden, and the emblem of the ruling house; all of these on three different levels), then the figurehead beast just holds in its paws only the symbol of the reigning Vasa dynasty. By coincidence, or rather by the course of history, this symbolism is identical to that of the Vasa 1628 ship.   
 

 

 
 

@Martes - Hey Martes, So I don't know whether to call it procedural or manual, but here is how I'm doing hull planking on Confederacy: 
 
1. The underlying topology of the ship has to represent the outer planking to begin with. Refer to the steps at the beginning of this topic for instructions on how I got the underlying topology to match the planks if you're curious.

2. In edit mode use 'mark seams' to visually outline the strakes, then the shape of each plank on the 2D mesh. Edge loop select makes this faster than you might think, I did the whole ship in under 15 mins

 
NOTE: I'm only showing the bottom of the hull for tutorial purposes, but the rest of the planking works the same way.
 
3. Use the solidify modifier to add thickness as desired, HOWEVER, DO NOT FILL THE RIM. Apply the modifier to get two separate 'sheets'.

 
4. In face select edit mode, press 'L' to highlight the front and backs of each plank and separate them using 'P'. You can do this in groups of planks as long as they're not touching


 
5. Go to each separate plank set object, edge select in edit mode, and choose select boundary loops.

6. Then you can bridge edge loops together, just make sure 'Loop Pairs' is selected.

7. Finally, join everything back into one object and change the 'Transform Pivot Point' to 'individual origins' Go into edit mode, select everything and press 'alt+s' then '-.1' to shrink each island along the normals by .1 inches (or whatever value looks good in metric units, just keep it small)

@Martes - Good eye! Actually, that notch has nothing to do with the modifier, it's an intentional marker I made to notate the start of the stepped scarf for the cant frames and the transition of the rabbet of the keel to the rabbet of them stem. I will remove it once I flush out the detail of the gripe and boxing joints

After you've flexed your muscles with one of the above suggested kits, think about the literally thousands of plans still extant for ships of the 18th century. Nearly all have never had a model built from them. Choosing one of those would be more than 'vaguely unique'.

Well, I think this project is complete, although I will build a permanent display stand and clear case to display Orca eventually. 

I think this could be the first ‘public’ Orca model to be built true to the traditional method for Novi lobster boat construction using frames; ribbands; ribs and planks, with a keel close to the original, and modelling the engine, and other below decks parts; pilot house as well as the lower trunk deck details, and all the film props. If I was to do this again there are still a few mistakes I would correct, as some dimensions and proportions had to be ‘guestimated’.

It’s been an interesting project, and I have learnt a lot, with help from many members, of course. Including the research and plan drawing there are hundreds of hours in the build. If there had to be a pandemic lockdown, it was not a bad way to pass the time.
 
Thanks for the 14K+ views and many thumbs up and comments, and the helpful information and advice - it is appreciated and has significantly improved the final model.

So, here’s some final pictures of the complete boat including one showing the decks removed to reveal the interior. 
 
 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
I have an idea for a fun follow-up build, which may appear in 2022. Watch this space.
Until then, I’ve taken the actors back to their barge, filming is wrapped, and I’d better take this old girl back to Amity before she sinks.
Farewell and adieu!
 

 

I have no interest in watching videos of a model, why?
 
As a photographer, and how I manage my photography website, it is an essential truth that the result of posting a large number of photos to a gallery is a sure fire way for none of those photos to be seen. Less is more, every time. I see this happen with Facebook posts, if I see +72 photos I don’t look at the first one. I see it in some build logs with a large number of photos showing pretty much the same thing, I skim right on by, especially if it’s photos not supported with text (the reverse is also true, text not supported by photos). 
 
My experience for a gallery is 12 images enough to generate interests an over 20 loses the audience. This doesn’t apply to a build log where there is a running narrative and progress photos, the difference between a gallery and a log. 
 

Speaking from my limited experience of drydocking ships, I just don't see how that could have happened unless there was a serious error in the blocking.
 
It'll be interesting to see what conclusions the investigation comes to.

Thank you Guy!  The USS Sunfish (SSN-649) part of Submarine Squadron 4 in Charleston!  I was on the USS SEAHORSE (SSN-669) from 1983 - 1990.  I would go back in a heartbeat (at least the mind is willing; the body is another story)    Thanks again for the greeting Shipmate!