Cathead

It partly depends on what your sails are made out of. Some people stretch the sails over a curved frame and fix them with a spray. Others run fine wire inside the seams and let the wire hold the shape. For my longboat build, I made the sails from paper, which held a curve without any extra work.

Thanks, popeye! That's what made sense to me, but for the life of me I couldn't confirm it. Also thanks to druxey, I'll see if I can get that right too. This sail rabbit hole I'm diving down has become quite interesting.

Were reef points always two per sail cloth? I ask, because one of the references I'm using for my topsail schooner build, a drawing by Dr. John Tilley, shows one reef point per cloth, and place those points at the seam between each cloth. This is very different than the two-per-cloth, between the seams, method described in this thread and in other references I've seen, such as this one. Also, a question that seems stupid: do the reef points extend equally on both sides of the sail (i.e. ropes hanging down each side) or just on one side? Every drawing I can find just shows sails face-on, no indication of how each side looks. Thanks for any guidance.

Michael, The curve of the sheer comes fairly naturally to the planks; I didn't pre-bend my sheer plank. I've no doubt that what you've done there will help, but you'll find that the real edge-bending you'll need comes at the bow. The planks are going to want to wrap up and over the one above them as they curve up the bow; you end up needing to put a "downward" bend in each one to accommodate this. If you can't envision it, try holding a few layers of planking parallel to each other amidships, and trying to keep them parallel as they run forward. This won't happen to the first one or two, but will rapidly start to be an issue as you work your way further down. The geometry of hull planking can be really counter-intuitive, at least it was (and somewhat still is) to me.

Michael, In addition to Ryland and Steve's links, if you go to the MSW main page and scroll down, you'll see a major heading for "Shop notes, techniques, etc" under which are subheading for various aspects of shipbuilding including one for "Building, framing, planking..." Under these subheadings are lots of useful threads in which people asked questions or offered advice. There are also especially useful threads pinned to the top of those pages, which is where you'll find some planking tutorials. As for the sheer, I understand your question now, and Steve is right. You can more or less set how deep you want the sheer to drop amidships, it can be a gentle curve or a fairly deep swoop, but you need to get it right at bow and stern.

Great project choice! I'm glad you've been talking to Kurt, he'll be an invaluable help. Make sure to check out Mike Dowling's recently completed Chaperon build; he did a great job with lots of useful insight about the kit.

This is in 1:64; the mockup shows the main topsail of a topsail schooner. I will definitely also be drawing in the stitching, adding ropes, etc. That mockup was solely to test whether I could make the panels look decent and in a reasonable amount of time.

Here's a mockup of a sail made panel-by-panel. I liked how my bond-paper sails came out on my longboat build, so decided to use that method again. This mockup is just cheap printer paper, cut into scale 24" strips and glued together along the seams in the pattern shown by the USGS drawing I linked above. The upper one is just a cutout with the seams drawn on; the lower one is the paneled sail. I really like the three-dimensional appearance. The real thing will need to be colored and detailed, but I proved to myself that I could assemble a paper paneled sail here the seams are partially real and not just simulated. Anyone else have thoughts? This took a couple hours to make, not too bad.

I'm no expert, but here's the process that worked pretty well for me. You're going to want to explore the planking tutorials given elsewhere on MSW, and some of the especially good build logs for this kit. You'll be edge-bending the planks, meaning bending them in a lateral curve while they are still sitting flat, then also bending them vertically so they wrap around the hull. Personally I think this works best in several steps: Soak the plank and gently edge-bend it around a form (like a piece of wood cut to approximately the curve you want). I do this on the edge of my cutting map so I can use clamps to hold the bend in place. Use a soft clamp like a clothespin or plastic clamp, not a sharp-edged one like a metal clamp, or the wetted wood will bear the clamp's imprint. I find that, in hot water, you only need to soak a minute or so. I use a hairdryer to quickly dry and lock the bend in place. Chuck has a tutorial video of him doing this without soaking, just the hairdryer, but I had trouble making that work. Experiment. Once you have a dry plank with an edge bend in it, resoak it and bend it around the frames into its final configuration, then clamp it again and let it dry in place, again with a hairdryer if you like. You will want to test-fit it and likely do some sanding/carving to the edge to ensure a nice fit. I find that resoaking or warming undoes part of the initial bend but not all; it can work best to over-edge-bend the plank assuming you will lose some of that curve before you're done. I also tended to put the bend a bit farther along the plank than it really needed to be, letting me slide the bended plank along the hull to find the place where the resulting curve best fits the shape it need to be. I'm not sure what you mean by your first question?

I'm glad you had a good experience. To elaborate, mine has been poor-quality wood, vague and poorly-translated instructions, drawings that are not consistently to scale, illustrations that are grainy and poorly reproduced (such that you have a hard time following individual lines on rigging diagrams, for example), terrible metal castings, and cheap blocks. I would have done far better to buy just the plans and scratchbuild given how much work I've put into correcting the kit's flaws.

Just to clarify, I'm not Julie. She started this thread in 2015, I just added to it since the topic seemed a pretty good fit for my own question rather than starting a whole new thread. Thanks for the references!

Thanks, Dee Dee. That first image is indeed what I was asking: does the upper seam go back and forth, or always on the same side? The illustration I linked to suggests that, at least for this prototype, it was the lower of those two colored examples. At 1:64, I'll only be able to simulate these seams, as any actual folding over of the sail material will end up way too thick. But it's still useful to try and understand what I'm trying to simulate. I just spent part of this evening mocking up an example, and will share it when the photography conditions are better.

Oddly enough, I may have found part of my answer right under my nose. I went back to look at the Dr. John Tilley drawing of the USRC Louisiana (which you can find on Wikipedia), and found that his drawing shows the orientation of the sails' seams. If you click on the image and fully zoom in, you can clearly see that he orients the seams continuously in one direction: with the fold facing the center of the square sails, and facing aft on the fore-and-aft sails. The only thing I can't see is what happens right at the middle of the square sails: how are those two panels joined, since the seam shown in JCF's central image above has to face one way or another? It seems odd to have the center of the sail lopsided with the seam facing only one way, but how else would it be done? Mark, I should have thought before I typed, of course that's an option. And I'm the son of a librarian! *smack on head*

Should the planks at the bow all taper up to a single point like that? My understanding was that planking lines should lie more parallel to the deck. It's a very Viking look, and a lot easier to plank that way, but I didn't think ships of this period were planked that way. You're laying out something closer to how I did the starboard side of my Ranger, but my port side is closer to how it "ought" to be in my understanding. Also, I wonder if they should taper so much; my understanding was that in traditional practice planks weren't supposed to taper more than half their original width. Of course, I'm far from an expert so am happy to be corrected. What's your thought process there?

These are fascinating resources, thank you! However, so far, I still cannot quite determine the answer to my core question: did the sail panels progressively overlap in one direction, or alternate back and forth? In other words, when the panels were laid out for stitching, did they do: a. __---__--- so that the panels alternate upper/lower when laid flat, or b. __--- so that the panels progressively overlap, technically getting higher and higher as the sail progresses to the right, or c. ---__ like b except that the panels progress up to the left. None of the illustrations or photos I've seen make this clear enough to me, and every written description just says something like "the panels were stitched together" with lots of detail on the type of stitching, but not on the layout of the seam itself from panel to panel. Any ideas? I realize that at a model scale this is a really pedantic detail, but I'm considering making sails panel by panel and want to know how it was really done. JCF, the book you reference looks fascinating, but I'm not sure I can justify buying it on my budget, and a small Midwestern library sure doesn't stock it.

I have a question about sail making that I can't find the answer to anywhere. When the original two foot wide canvas panels were stitched together, just how were they laid out? Did each panel progressively overlap along the edge, or did they alternate over and underlapping? If the former, did it matter on which side the overlapping happened? I can find lots of info on how to mimic seams on a sail made in one piece, but no clear depiction of how those panels were actually laid out. Anyone?

This is a fun kit that will teach a lot of useful basic skills. It's harder than it looks but not as hard as it seems, and as you note, there sure are a lot of good build logs to draw on. Building this really helped me learn a lot, and I wish you great success. I'll be following along. Personally, I would use a sanding block, something that gives you a solid surface behind the sandpaper. If you try to do it with just the paper, you'll almost inevitably end up rounding off the edge rather than getting a smooth surface. I used a piece of wood that spanned about three frames at once; this also helps ensure that each frame's final angle lines up with its neighbors, ensuring a smoother run for the planks. For the planks that need a lot of fairing, you can probably use a coarser grit to save time at first. More needs to be taken off than you may think at first.

Charlie, on my screen the colors are coming out really strange. I'm seeing a rainbow of colors that don't really match what you describe in your text. Did the images get corrupted somehow, or is my computer reading them strangely?

I've been quietly working on various details, while neglecting this build log. This time of year I mostly model after dark, so photography conditions aren't very good, and as I'm also doing a lot of writing & editing work it's less attractive to spend my down time also working with words. But a month seems more than enough neglect, so here's what I've been up to. I'm not at all happy with many of the metal castings in this kit, so decided to remake some. The cross-trees are trash; the arms aren't even square and several of the cast-in rings broke when I tried to drill them out (they were cast solid). So I made new ones from wood with brass eyerings. It took three tries to get a version I was happy with. I also didn't care for the cast anchor stocks, so again made my own. All these parts should be wood, anyway. I stained everything and wrapped the anchor stocks with blackened brass strip, touched up with paint. I've also been working on the masts, booms, yards, and so on. Typically at this point, the diameter dowels supplied with the kit didn't fit the metal hardware, such as the various boom rings and crutches, that are supposed to fit on the masts. I had to do quite a bit of custom-sanding and filing of the metal parts to get everything right. The rings aren't even the same size, so on the mizzenmast, where two different rings are supposed to sit near one another, those two rings have very different diameters such that by the time you sand the mast down enough to make the smaller one fit, the larger one is too large. Sigh. It'll all work well enough. Overall I think these parts came out well. Here are some detailed views of the current status. The bowsprit/jib-boom assembly is installed and gammoned, the anchors are done, the pin-racks are made, and the carronade is finished and rigged. Sharp eyes may notice that I've replaced all the blocks, everywhere, with better ones from Syren. It took a few days to work up the courage for cutting out all the blocks I'd already carefully fitted onto the various deck eyerings, but I did it and it was worth it. I'm also happy with how the rope coils turned out for the carronade and anchor lines. The light in these last few photos is still a little odd; I took it outdoors late in the afternoon, and the white background produced an odd color balance. Oh well. I should mention a few mistakes made along the way. I rigged the whole carronade assembly off the model, then installed it, tying the outer-four blocks to their respective eyerings (pre-glued into the deck). Only after completion did I notice that I'd rigged the port side backwards; the forward tackle is supposed to go over the aftward tackle on both sides, but I'd done the it the wrong way on the port side. Much cursing ensued, as the gun was already glued down and I didn't think I could re-rig it in place because of tight clearances. Finally I used a pair of small pliers to work the whole eyebolt out of the deck, slid the entire tackle assembly out from under the rear tackle, and re-inserted the eyering once the rest of the tackle was on top. I don't know if anyone could follow that, but in the photo above it's now rigged properly. I also managed to glue the crosstrees onto the masts backwards the first time, but managed to get them off without breaking anything. Then I filed away the glue and re-installed them properly. Only then did I realize that I should have tied on all the blocks to the rings beforehand; now I have to do it up on top the masts. Oh well, that I can handle. I'll put equal blame on me for not thinking far enough ahead, and the instructions for being nearly completely useless. And here she is now, with an insert showing one of the hand-made crosstrees (as luck would have it, the less-good one which I didn't notice through the lens). The masts are glued in, with the proper rake established using a cardboard pattern traced from the plans and various temporary rigging lines. It's amazing what a few dowels can do to transform a hull into a ship. Of course, I now have to be extra-careful because I've gotten used to reaching around and over the hull to grab something, and now there are delicate bits sticking up into my arm-space. So that's how this revenue cutter enters the New Year. I'm about to have to start deciphering rigging diagrams, something that is equally fascinating and terrifying to me. Because I want to rig this model with sails, I may start with those first. Thanks for reading and for all your support in this very educational project. Happy New Year!

I am building the Corel Ranger right now, and will never build another kit from them.

Which model do you mean? The scale and material (plastic vs wood) may affect the paints you choose. For example, Revell has plastic kits in both 1/96 and 1/196 which are very different sizes, so you would need a different size paint set. And if you're asking about a wooden model, you might want different paints for wood rather than plastic.

Mike Dowling recently completed a very nice Chaperon build, and there are several other ongoing builds of other kits. Kurt didn't say so, but he's built an excellent Chaperon and can give a lot of advice and guidance. To my eye, the AL, Mantua, and OcCre kits are not particularly realistic; they may build an attractive model but are rather toylike in appearance, very out of scale and not all that accurate. The Amati and M-E kits appear far more realistic if you care about that aspect of a build. I have not built any of these so cannot give a direct review but there are enough build logs for all to at least get a sense of the materials and scope of work.

I've never built that kit, but to my eye it appears similar to most "riverboat" kits in looking out of scale and toylike. Such kits can make an attractive model, but shouldn't really be considered accurate.

What is the proper approach to gammoning between a bowsprit and jib-boom? I'm at this point in my Corel Ranger, which as the original post here suggests, is a schooner without gammoning connecting the bowsprit to the stem, just between the bowsprit and jib-boom, and both the plans and finished photos show no frapping turns, just a straight wrap around both booms. I can easily envision starting with an eye or slipknot looped around the bowsprit, then wrapping successively from fore to aft, but how should it be finished. I can't seem to find a clear answer anywhere.

It's not a stupid question, just one without a clear answer because there are so many variables. Model Expo's instructions seem to vary in quality depending on how old the kit is; the good news is that all of their kits' instructions are posted on their website, so you can review the entire process before diving in. It's a very helpful way to judge if a kit (and its instructions) are suitable. For example, Sultana has a regular set of instructions and then a long, detailed practicum (I haven't built this kit, but I've consulted its practicum before for some good drawings of certain concepts that apply to other situations). Personally, if something like Niagara is overwhelming you, maybe look for a simpler kit? A nice sloop with one mast where you can learn the basics of rigging and then apply them to a more complex situation? I've heard very good things about BlueJacket, though I haven't built one of their kits yet.