Cathead

I've developed a method for making paneled sails from paper that works nicely to simulate the three-dimensional texture of a sail. It seems to offer a lot of visual interest, more so than a flat sail, and the procedure is pretty manageable. I like paper sails for several reasons: they hold their shape better than cloth sails (including a natural bellied curve), they have a nice texture (especially when colored by pastels), and there's no need for complicated or careful sewing. In this topic I'll walk through the method I worked out so far, starting with making the panels themselves. I haven't seen much else about paper sails on MSW, so hopefully this is of interest to some folks. I first tried paper sails on my 18th century longboat build and was quite happy with the result. In that case, I just used a flat sheet of paper and drew on the seams and stitches. It worked, but was too flat. For my current build of a US Revenue Cutter, I decided to try making sails the prototypical way, assembling them from long panels of material joined at the edges. I first asked for guidance in another sail-making thread, which produced a lot of good ideas and guidance. This guide to sail-making from the Historic Naval Ships Association was a particularly useful suggestion, as it's chock full of detailed diagrams for the arrangement of panels and the overall design of sails for different craft. Following these guides, I made a few sails and was very pleased, so I finally put in the time to document each step of the process for the foresail of my revenue cutter. Here's what these sails look like on that model: Cutting & Assembling Panels I used bond paper, which is heavier and more textured than regular printer paper. This is commonly used for printing theses; my supply came from leftovers of Mrs. Cathead's graduate thesis. Beware of watermarks in bond paper; you don't want your sail advertising a paper company when you shine a light on it! As shown above, I mark a sheet of bond paper in scale 2' strips, then cut the strips on a small paper-cutter. Using a dedicated fine brush, I run a narrow strip of basic wood glue along the edge of each strip, then lay it out on the edge of a neighbor strip. A glue stick might work too, but I've been fine using this method. Repeating this process produces a nice 3D-textured shape from which you can cut the final sail pattern. Make sure you pay attention to the direction in which you lay out the strips; I did one of my sails backward (so that the seams ran counter to the other sails) and had to start over because it looked funny. Above, you can already see how the overlapped panels create more visual interest than a plain, smooth sail. Next, I cut and attach any corner reinforcement panels. Then I cut thinner strips for the edging of the sails, and fold them in half. Then I brush glue along the inner surface of each one, and carefully fold it in place along the sail's edges. There are several ways to do this: you can brush 1/2 of the strip, glue it on, then brush on the other 1/2 and fold it over; or you can brush the whole inner surface at once. Although the former approach sounds better in theory, I've found that the moisture in the glue causes the paper to buckle, so that if you do the 1/2 approach, the strip bends out of true and is really hard to align on the sail's edge. If you glue the whole thing, it stays straight and is easier to handle. Incidentally, the same buckling-when-wet property works to your advantage in the sail overall; as the moisture dries between the panels, the sail inevitably takes on a bit of a curve, which nearly perfectly mimics the gently belly of a sail with wind in it. I also cut any reef-point strips and attach these. Once the sail is fully assembled, I color it with artist's pastels. You can use your finger or a cotton swab to gently rub on color; the paper takes up the color wonderfully, and it really brings out the texture of the bond paper. The 3D nature of the assembly helps, too, as the pastel powder naturally collects a bit along seams and highlights the structural elements of the sail. You can use a mix of colors to get just the appearance you want. One important warning: don't rub too hard, and hold the sail flat. A downside of paper vs. cloth is that paper creases; if you rub too hard or otherwise force the paper to bend or kink, you'll never get that feature out again. Some folks may want to use some kind of fixative on the color, but I've never bothered; the bond paper holds pastel really well on its own. Just be careful about handling the sail with fingers coated in pastel; you don't want to leave a dark fingerprint smudge somewhere. That's the first stage. You could stop here for a basic version, but I went ahead and added boltropes and reef points, which I'll cover in the next few posts.

Here is my latest thinking on the standing rigging for this topsail schooner, having considered all of your input and studied a variety of resources: The mainmast, which only supports a fore-aft sail, has one shroud, no ratlines. The foremast, which supports both a fore-aft sail plus a forecourse and foretopsail, has two shrouds with ratlines. Both masts have two topmast stays per side, which run through spreaders on the crosstrees, then down to a collar on the mast. I can either terminate them here in a collar, or run them through a collar down to the deck. I haven't decided which, though I'm leaning toward the former; thoughts? I like this for several reasons. One, it captures elements of many different contemporary schooner rigs; any one part of this has a prototypical example. Two, it makes each mast different, so there's more visual interest. Three, it means I don't have to rig ratlines on both masts! Four, I can intuitively understand why every bit of this would be rigged this way, which I like. Five, it's similar to the USRC Louisiana drawing I've been using regularly as a reference for this build, giving it more justification. And since mine is a freelance build, I can decide to rig it the way I want as long as there's a sensible explanation. Just to be clear, this doesn't show the rest of the standing rigging, which I'm pretty clear on. Thoughts?

Chborgm, sorry for the slow reply, but I finally had a chance to pull out my copy of Steamboats on the Western Rivers by Louis C. Hunter, which has this to say about the safety act of 1838: Hunter goes on to argue that of the few inspectors created by the law, there was no oversight and essentially no structure, so the system quickly became corrupt and all but meaningless, especially on the Western rivers. Congress passed a new law in 1852 that seems to have been stronger and better enforced, but I couldn't find any further mention of signal light regulations specifically. On the other hand, Hunter notes elsewhere that steamboat pilots vigorously protested any requirement for carrying signal lights on the grounds that such lights would reduce or ruin their night vision and their ability to read the river's surface, due to the glare and reflection off the water. You also might enjoy reading this archived article from the February 23, 1865 New York Times, which discusses the history of regulation of navigation lights on inland waterways in the US, with reference to the 1852 act of Congress. Essentially it seems to argue that as of 1865, there was still no clear regulatory structure or enforcement of the subject on inland waterways. Finally, this passage from The Steamboat Bertrand and Missouri River Commerce tells a similar tale: the 1838 law was toothless, the 1852 law stricter, but nowhere is it clear if and when clear guidance was written and enforced on just what kind of lights steamboats were required to carry. In other words, backdate your boat toward the Civil War (which you've already done by converting her to a wood-burner), and you can get away with all sorts of options, including no signal lights, especially in a freelance build. Cool question, wish I had more positive knowledge about it.

The foresail is made and rigged. This was essentially a repeat of the mainsail, so there's really nothing new to report. If you happen to notice that the fore- and mainmasts aren't at the same angle (spreading apart as they rise), that's a temporary mistake. I hadn't noticed it at first, but when I was experimenting with tightening down all the running rigging on the mainsail, I apparently overdid it and pulled the mainmast aft (no standing rigging is installed yet). It'll be fixed once I start installing more standing rigging. Apologies for doing such a terrible job of updating this log. Among a variety of factors, I've been super-busy lately with my editing work over the last month, along with taking some online classes, meaning that sitting down on evenings or weekends to spend more time working with words on the computer for MSW hasn't really been high on my "fun" list. I also took a long-delayed trip to Kansas City, Missouri to revisit the Steamboat Arabia museum to research my next model project, another Missouri River steamboat along the same lines as my Bertrand but a sidewheeler from ten years earlier. I have a wealth of photos and measurements of the boat's salvaged equipment, stern, and cargo to pore over and write up, which has also been distracting me. But I haven't given up on this ship! I'm also still working through my uncertainties about the standing rigging, and recently ordered some deadeye kits from Syren. Next up, I'll make and rig the remaining sails, then start in on the standing rigging. I hope to update again before another month goes past. Thank you all for sticking with me on this; it's nice to have even a small audience to keep me going as my brain wanders toward my beloved riverboats again.

Just to be clear, I am very grateful for the work you and other admin types are putting in. I know how frustrating it can be to the herd cats into a new system. I am very appreciative.

These days, that's pretty bad indeed. I agree, though, post some photos here too, so your log is self-contained and complete.

I can't for the life of me figure out (without cheating) which one is the final plank. Lovely work.

OK, I think I have it configured right. Chuck, I understand your frustration as I've been on your side of things too, but it's also true that it's really easy to develop a "curse of knowledge" approach when you develop or manage a system and can't easily envision all the ways other people might interact with or understand it. For example, several of the options you advised me to select worked, but my brain didn't read their titles as meaning what they did, so I didn't understand that I should choose them. As for PMing, my rationale for posting here was to potentially save you some work and frustration, as there's a chance someone else will have a similar problem. If I PM, you still have to spend the time answering me, but no one else sees the answer. This way doesn't cost you more time but potentially helps the community (and you) if even more more person sees this and doesn't bother you individually. That was my reasoning anyway; I was trying to be respectful by NOT insisting on personal/private attention. Maybe it would be helpful to post a guide to what each option actually means/does? I found them confusing, and I'm 37 and reasonably tech-savvy.

So I apologize if I've missed something, but I have a couple problems/questions: 1) When I set up a custom stream for Content I've Posted In (which is how I track things), it's showing every new comment in any topic as a separate line. So, for example, it might separately show three new comments in Them Old Jokes before showing a new comment in another topic. Before all these changes, the system just showed me which topics had new content, not every single element of that content. The new way is a pain, because I have to scroll through lots of individual comment listings to check each topic. I used to just be able to see a list of topics that had new content, and click the icon to be taken to the first unread post. How can I now tell it I want to see topics, not comments? 2) Having set up a custom stream as described above, it's still buried under two menus levels. I have to mouse over Activity, mouse down over 4 stream types I don't use, then click on (not just mouse over) My Activity Streams, then once again mouse over the same list of 4 stream types I don't use that are already shown in the first menu, and only then click on my custom stream. This is honestly quite a pain; isn't there a way to customize these menus to simply put the streams we actually want to use in the upper-most menu where we can easily click on them?

Well, that figures. When I first saw your username, I just figured you were an especially Anglophile Canadian.

FYI, most Americans won't get that joke. Here, they call that confinement or feedlot; battery is primarily a European term. I didn't realize it was used in Canada, but it shouldn't surprise me. Great pun, anyway.

That's really nice. The low-key, understated lighting effect is well-done and just the right approach, in my opinion. Excellent work.

This has been so neat to follow. Wish it wasn't such a long flight to come see her! Fantastic work on a really interesting prototype; I learned a lot from following this log and appreciate your work and writing.

This has been such an inspiring project to follow, both for its backstory and the quality of its craftsmanship. I didn't know Augie, I'm too new on this forum, but after following this project I will always hold a memory of someone so respected by his peers that this project became a reality. And I have immense respect for a builder who takes on such a responsibility, and does such a memorable job. Thank you for this.

I've only ever used the stuff supplied by BlueJacket, but it's worked very well for me. Also, I've found that metal parts actually take paint better after blackening; the process seems to roughen the surface slightly and the paint adheres better. But take all that as a grain of salt; I'm not that experienced with a wide variety of solutions and paint brands; I hope others chime in as well to give you broader advice. Make sure you order brass black rather than pewter black.

Personally, I'd use a blackening solution. Holds better and looks nicer.

Thanks for the input, Frankie. I'm working on putting together a new standing rigging plan and will post a draft when I do.

Hmm, lots to think about. Both those images are quite different from what the kit suggests (no surprise there). I'm going to have to digest this. Unfortunately, I'm far enough along to make serious redos an interesting proposition. I just didn't think to pre-consult the rigging plan when I was building the hull and attaching the channels. Another reference I should have mentioned is this drawing of USRC Louisiana, about the closest prototype to this kit, by Dr. John Tilley. It shows two shrouds forward and one aft, with ratlines forward. It also shows two stays running from the topmast down to blocks on the deck. This arrangement seems sensible to me. By the way, another question: in a vessel like this, are the two masts considered fore and main, or main and mizzen?

jwiley, this particular model has a square course and topsail on the mainmast along with a fore-and-aft mainsail; the mizzen has just the fore-and-aft sail although it also has a fore-and-aft topsail which I don't know the exact name for. See the image in the first post of my build log for the kit's intended sail plan. It makes sense that ratlines would be most necessary on masts with square sails; I still can't understand the purpose of the pseudo-stays run through blocks (the red and blue lines above).

I'm struggling with a rigging question for my current built, the Corel Ranger, which is a fictional version of a US Revenue Schooner from around 1820. The plans for the standing rigging show only one normal shroud per mast (per side), with no allowance for ratlines. Then it shows two other lines from the top of the mast, through the crosstrees, down to blocks along the rail and deck, which appear to serve as shrouds but are not listed as such and don't use deadeyes or blackened lines. My confusion is twofold: One, what are these other lines for, as they don't appear to be operational (don't attach to any sails, yards, gaffs, etc) but aren't treated as standing rigging either. Two, with only one shroud per mast and no ratlines, how would sailors reach the crosstrees and the upper yards/gaffs for handling the topsails and any other repairs? One respondent in my build log suggested a bosun's chair, which might make sense for occasional access, but the crew would have to get up there quickly and commonly in normal sailing operations. Below is my attempt to diagram the situation. Most of the contemporary images I can find show these schooners with two or three shrouds per mast (per side) with ratlines, as I would expect. So is the kit just full of guano when it comes to this rigging plan, or is there a reason to do it this way? I would greatly appreciate any advice.

It'd be most realistic, and unique, to present it unrigged and lashed down as it really would be on the deck, especially given the way you've built the stand. I like that idea as a creative approach to a common model. But of course presenting it fully or partially rigged has a lot of visual appeal, and few people will care that you have it displayed on a "deck" while still rigged.

Nicely done, it really captures the ambience of these vessels.

I had the same problem, not thinking I could drill into the brass strips. Using eyebolts is a great solution, wish I'd thought of it!

I'd say finish the base to match the wood in the model; otherwise the raw wood just looks unfinished and clashes a bit. The model looks very nice.

I think Brian's suggestion is good (sails on and oars drawn in). Besides, unless you're carving a full crew as well, it's clearly a display model rather than a "life-like pose", so you're allowed some leeway to display features as you see fit.