Roger Pellett

Wrecks of vessels that fought on the American Lakes during the War of 1812 had shot stored in the scooped out holes that you have in mind. Sometimes scooped into the waterways. Roger

Well done, Dan! Roger

Model plywood is widely available. Stores like Michaels carry it. It comes in “nominal” fractional thicknesses, from 1/64” to 1/8”. Nominal means that it is actually metric thicknesses that are close to fractions. I believe that there are two grades; the Craft grade material that you are likely to find locally and a higher grade intended for model aircraft and available from specialty RC model aircraft suppliers. If you use it for the applications that I am suggesting the Craft Grade Material is fine. I suggest that you do need one piece of high class material; the piece for the keel. Many of the kit build logs report warped keels that require a lot of effort and frustration to correct. You can find 1/8” Baltic Birch ply at on line woodworking sources. Try Woodcraft Supply. I personally would not suggest using any sort of plywood for frames. Plywood is great for it’s intended use; covering flat or developable surfaces, but it’s Achilles heel is its cut edge. If you need to use any kind of fastener, permanent or temporary, driven into the edge you can separate the laminations. Styrene, that’s the dark side😆! Roger

Tools: It is possible to cut the keel and bulkheads with an inexpensive coping saw. If you plan to go this route, buy the saw, a selection of blades and practice. A powered scroll saw certainly makes things easier. Wood: with scratch building it’s a good idea to develop a building plan before you start. If I were building this I would build it upside down with the tops of the bulkheads attached to the building board. I would extend the bulkheads to be cut off after the hull is planked. Plywood construction requires “developable shapes” as the plywood does not like to bend in more than one dimension. So to accurately reproduce the shape you might have to plank the hull. There is, of course, a “chine log” that defines the chine and provides the landing along the chine for both the bottom and side planking. Diagonal planking would be an easy way to plank the bottom and would probably replicate actual practice. I would not use either plywood or MDF for the bulkheads. I would buy ordinary 1in pine at your local lumberyard/ home improvement store; not spruce or fir. I would Saw it into 1/16” thick strips and use it to build two layered pentagonal shapes for each bulkhead. Stagger the joints. Then use your poster board bulkheads to draw the finished shape on to each and cut it out. The center (keel) piece can be made from thin plywood. See if you can find 1/8” Baltic Birch. The Bottom can be diagonally planked with two layers of craft plywood cut into narrow strips. For the side planking I would cut more of your pine into thin planking strips. Roger

Thanks all! I’m fortunate to have enough space to have two workshops; one dedicated to relatively clean close work and one immediately next to it for cutting and machining lumber with full sized woodworking equipment. This second shop also shares space with gardening tools. The jointer is a wonderful precise woodworking tool. It is close to 45 years old, built when machined cast iron, and external motors with v belts were the standard. 4in (approx 100mm) is enough capacity for my needs. Roger

You are a victim of Kit Manufacturer Marketing- using using drawings of a vessel unknown to the public or inventing plans from scratch and then marketing the kit as building a famous ship. Howard Chapelle covers Bermuda built Schooners in several of his books. In particular there is a lovely three masted Schooner from the very early 1800’s named Flying Fish. This vessel was probably built on the Chesapeake Bay or in the Caribbean. Bought by the Royal Navy, her lines were recorded and used to build several duplicates in Bermuda. She would make an interesting and handsome model. Roger

It would seem that there are two types of pin vices; ones like the Trumpeter tool shown above intended for hand drilling and those intended for more general use as the Starrett or Moody four tool sets. Wherever possible I try to machine drill holes and these pin vices can be used to hold very small drills. The pin Vice with its drill can then be chucked in my Sherline sensitive drilling attachment. Wherever possible, I try to reduce the number of moving parts when working. I therefore do not find hand vices to be particularly useful. My shop is equipped with several bench vices and I use these whenever possible. If I were just beginning to outfit a model building shop my first tool would be a good bench vice. Roger

Hatch Covers II Each hatch was covered by 12 wooden covers. The covers, each weighing about 150# were handled by the deckhands; two men per hatch. This was a backbreaking job that had to be performed four times for each usually short round trip voyage. The covers were each 9ft long x 30in wide and were made from 2in x 6in white pine lumber (I assumed that these are actual dimensions and not nominal as is the case today). I had originally intended to make the 12 covers per hatch as one piece using 1/32in thick craft plywood, but recently decided to model each cover separately with individual planks. After considering several options I arrived at the following system: Using some nice 1” nominal clear pine from the offcut bin at the local Menards store, I ripped a number of 1/16in pieces (6in to scale) These had to be accurate within a few .001” as 60 1/16” wide planks make the covers to close each hatch. If each plank were to be .010” too wide, the cumulative error would be 0.60”. I, therefore, glued the saw cut planks to a flat board and used my jointer to remove the few thousands necessary. I then glued the .060” thick strips into stacks, each stack 5 strips high. For glue, I used ordinary PVA glue colored with burnt umber acrylic artist color. I used several large C clamps to get the clamping pressure necessary to get tight glue lines between layers in the stack. Each stack was then tried up to ensure straight parallel edges. Each stack was then cut into 1-1/4” blocks; the width of the hatch coamings. Surfaces that would represent edges of the finished covers were then painted. The Byrnes Saw was then set up with the NRG thin rip guide and the and .030” thick hatch covers were sliced off each block. Yes, the hatch covers are .01” thicker than scale but is is not apparent. Photo:

This just keeps getting better and better!

Silverman, First, I would like to congratulate you on an absolutely stunning model! Your clean, precise, workmanship is outstanding. Re; your post no 45 above concerning the method for working an eye into the end of a rope. If I correctly understand the method, this same idea has been used in more modern times to make rope grommets. In this case, the rope is first separated into its three components and then put back together again into a circle. Roger

A trite expression: “you can’t prove a negative.” Fundamental geometric relationships have not changed since ancient times. Venetian shipyards were not outfitted with “Plank-O-Matic” machines that allowed them to defy Euclid’s laws. If the shape of your hull requires a stealer or drop strake it’s a reasonable assumption that the Venetians required ones too. Roger

The guy who described the technique for making brass blocks was Gerald Wingrove. A forgotten book applicable to early small craft is The Fore and Aft Rig In America by E.P. Thomas. First published in 1927, he rigorously examines available contemporary evidence and draws some interesting conclusions. He concludes that there were two separate and distinct gaff rigs; a Short Gaff and a Long Gaff. He concludes that the Long Gaff is actually a further development of the Sprit Rig. While the Short Gaff is the Shoulder of Mutton Rig of undetermined origin. In Daniel Defoe’s early Eighteenth Century Book, Robinson Crusoe actually mentions the Shoulder of Mutton sail as it applies to warships boats. The drawing that you are using is of course the Short Gaff rig while the more famous Medway Longboat is rigged with the Long Gaff rig. Thomas also draws heavily on William Burgis’s two drawings of New York and Boston published in 1717 and 1725 respectively. I have included below, a section of the New York drawing showing what appears to be an anchored Longboat. This boat influenced me in the overall “look” of my model. Roger

Very nice!

Allan, If you have access to a lathe, a notable British modeler who posted on MSW and sadly recently passed away (sorry, I can’t remember his name) had a system for turning tiny blocks from brass rod. It worked something like this. Select a brass rod with the diameter equal to the length of the block. File a flat on two opposing sides of the rod. Spin the rod in the lathe to round off the edges of the flats. Cut correctly spaced grooves in the rod. Part off each block Solder wire around each block. I tried to make some blocks using this method a while ago. Everything worked fine until I tried to solder the wire bails around the blocks. The solder ran into the grooves in the, blocks. I now have a very fine tipped soldering iron and some .010” diameter solder that should work well. If you are willing to use purchased parts, send me a PM. Roger

Craig, That’s exactly how I rigged my model. Roger

Here are some photos of the rigging of the model that I built using the drawing that you posted. I spent a great deal of time studying the drawing and arriving at my own decisions about the rigging. As I posted before, I believe that this represents a much earlier boat than you are modeling. Perhaps a transition from the boomless mainsail rigs of the 1600’s to the later “Medway” Longboat rig. Conclusions: The block at the masthead is a triple. It handles three lines: 1. The topping lift for the mainsail. This line is secured to the masthead just above the triple block, passes through a single block at the end of the topping lift pendant then through one sheave on the triple and down to a pin on the fixed thwart. 2. The peak halyard. As I posted above the mainsail on the boat is a “shoulder of mutton” sail, not a true gaff. The gaff only supports the head of the sail and the peak halyard does not need great mechanical advantage to do this. So it is just a single whip, spliced to a single block at the gaff end, passing through the second sheave on the triple block and down to a pin on the fixed thwart. 3. The throat halyard. This is spliced to the throat of the triple block, passes down to a single block at the inboard end of the gaff, back up to the third sheave on the triple block and down to a pin on the fixed thwart. You will also note a cheek block at the masthead. This handles the jib halyard. The jib is set flying- there is no fixed stay supporting its luff. There is a famous drawing of New York Harbor from the 1720’s showing the jib hoisted In stops as I show on my model. The traveler on the bowsprit allows the sail to be brought inboard before it is lowered. A danger with this flying sail is that the boat can sail over it if it is not brought inboard first. The mainsheet block moves back and forth OVER the tiller on an iron traveler. Roger

Very nice carving.

We naturally tend to think today of most items in manufacturing terms so if I say 1965 Ford Mustang, most people know exactly what I am talking about. As a hand crafted item, there was probably much more variety in ships’ boats of the same type. Even so, there was an attempt to classify different boat types, so any seaman would know if he was looking at a yawl, a Longboat, or a launch; something much more difficult for us to do today. As a general rule, I believe that 18th Century Longboats were not fitted with washboards. On the other hand, washboards were a defining feature of a Cutter. Longboats, were however, supposed to be capable of offshore service and ships’ carpenters would have been expected to be able increase freeboard of these boats when required. ROGER

Bob, thanks for your post and alternate procedure. 30or so years ago hatch boards like you posted were popular decorator items. Although I knew what they were, I often wondered where they came from. I recently reviewed a book on the Ocean Class steamships for the Nautical Research Journal. The more famous Liberty ships were modifications of the British designed Oceans. When modifying the design of the Oceans for the Liberties, it was decided to retain the wooden hatch covers as they could also serve as lifesaving devices. Roger

Short Answer: I’m cheating! Actually, I’m still refining the process. There are 150+ to make. ID of each ring is 1/32”. Here’s my process: 1. Make a fixture consisting of a 1/32” diameter aluminum wire embedded in an aluminum block. There is also a brass ground lug bolted to the block. 2. Make loops of 30 gage tinned copper wire. Diameter is unimportant. Ends of wire are lightly twisted and soldered together. 3. Place one end of the loop over the aluminum pin in the fixture. Chuck the other end in an “eggbeater” type hand drill. Turn the drill until the loop twists and forms an eye around the 1/32” dia Al pin. 4. Solder the twisted tail using my resistance soldering device. 5. Remove from fixture and round up the eye with a tapered pin. I have tried steps 1-4 with success. In use, the rings will lay flat on the hatch board with the tail cemented into a hole in the board. Roger

I need to make a large quantity of ringbolts for the hatch covers for my current project. At 1:96 scale they are tiny. I decided to make them from 30ga (.010” diameter) tinned wire so I ordered a small spool from Amazon. The wire was supplied by a Company named Remington Industries. They are a supply house in the Chicago area specializing in wire. They stock bare copper, tinned copper, nichrome, and stainless steel wires., plus various insulated wires. There is no minimum order, they do not charge for shipping and service was prompt. A possible source for specialized needs. Next time I’ll order direct. Website is Remingtonindustries.com Roger

Guy, if you have bought your Byrnes saw or (or any other mini saw with a 1/2 in miter gage slot), by all means buy the NRG’s thin rip fixture. I just finished cutting 70+ hatch boards with my saw using this little fixture. These boards are only 1/32” thick (1/2 mm?). It made the job quick and easy. Buy directly from the, NRG office. Roger

A major advantage of any compressor/ tank combination is the amount of energy that can be stored. The compressor that I described in my post #11 above stores air at 125 psi. My Badger airbrush requires air at approximately 25psi. The remaining 100psi x the volume of the tank is stored energy. The pressure control switch turns the compressor on and off to maintain 125psi in the tank. This ability to store large amounts of energy in a small volume is what makes compressed air so useful. Ignoring aerosol type systems, all other systems for supplying air brushes require the compressor to keep up with demand as without a tank they cannot store energy. in other words, capacity is dependent on the capacity of the compressor itself. Compressor capacity will be limited to the volume of the compression chamber x the # of compression cycles/ minute. This would require the compressor to operate at very high speeds. The same idea as a Dremel type tools that produce advertised power by speed rather than torque. It is also possible that these tools might use some type of turbine technology. This again would be a low pressure system requiring very high speed operation can producing high frequency noise. Again without an air tank, they would probably struggle to keep up with demand. Roger

If you want to feel that this is really your model, avoid the plastic hull and build a solid hull model with a carved wooden hull. IMHO carving a wooden hull is enjoyable and will give you a feeling for the “lines” of a real ship. Solid hull model kits are unusual in today’s POB model world but they do exist. Bluejacket offers several. Roger

Bill, have you tried the air tanks used for “portable air” for inflating automobile tires. You can fill it at any gas station. Roger