Roger Pellett
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Everything posted by Roger Pellett
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Do you really need plans? First get your camera out and photograph everything. You are not building an accurate model of the Morgan. You are trying to restore your grandfather’s model and to preserve his workmanship. The photos should give you a good idea of what he did. Used books may be much cheaper than a complete set of Mystic Plans. Maynard Bray has authored book describing Mystic’s watercraft collection. The original edition which should be available on used book sites includes a copy of at least some of the Morgan’s drawings. You should also be able to find a book “Whaleships and Whaling” by man named Church that includes many vintage photographs. If this were my model I would remove all of the rigging so I could clean the hull and deck structures (saliva and lots of Qtips). I would make new spars as necessary using the old ones as patterns and re-rig. Roger
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I am fortunate to have space to have two shops, a model building shop and a shop for rough work where I store lumber and use my jointer, table saw and thickness sander. I have never done a good job of controlling dust. Our house has had a 1990 vintage forced air heating system with a high efficiency air filter, and last fall we replaced it. I was surprised how much less dust finds its way upstairs. I recently bought a Dust Deputy and will rig up a proper system when I finish my current modelling project. Roger
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I have a thickness sander that I built from NRG plans too. Driven by a 1/2 hp Motor. It works fine, but if this were my lumber I would plane one side of the 3in sides flat and smooth on my jointer, then I would slice off planks to the required thickness on a table or bandsaw. Roger
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Jaager’s excellent advice does not mention a jointer but it can be quite useful when reducing rough stock. A warped, cupped or twisted board is hard to cut on a table saw or band saw without the blade binding and that is when accidents happen. With a jointer you can plane one surface. You then have a flat surface to lay on your band saw or table saw table for ripping stock. They are not easy to use but hollow ground table saw blades will produce smooth surfaces. Don’t try to use them if dull as they will burn the edges of your planking. Roger
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When I was 7 years old my mother took me to see a collection of ship models on display at O’Neils Department Store in nearby Akron, Ohio. It was a life changing event and from that moment I was fascinated by ships in general and ship models in particular. 68 years later I still remember some of those models and have visited them several times at the Mariners Museum in Newport News, VA. The models that I saw were the magnificent ones built by August Crabtree. It’s too bad that this inspiration is not available to more kids today. Roger
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- albertic
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Dick, If I understand your plan correctly, the word “cunning” does not do it justice. You are in fact replicating in miniature a process that could have been used 700 or so years ago to build the real thing. Although the original builders would not have had a jig like you show assembling frames from segments calculated from your half lune is a plasuable scenario. Too few people today realize that even after the invention of the practice of lofting from a formal lines drawing c 1600’s most ships were built using some sort of rule of thumb system much of which has been lost to history. Roger
- 263 replies
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- nave tonda
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I just dug out my copy of the book, and table 9.1 is printed correctly. Send me a P M and I will mail you a copy. My ability to produce this electronically is limited. Roger
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It will be interesting to see how well the hull fairs up using this technique. Roger
- 263 replies
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Today I finished my block polishing machine, crude but it works. Made entirely of on hand scrap so it cost nothing. It is powered by my Sherline lathe on a slow setting. The tin can is lined with 800 grit wet dry and the flappers are made from the same. I may experiment with more aggressive paper down the road. Roger
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The term “fast” with regard to sailing ships is complicated and depended on the situation. In light air it could relate to a vessel’s ability to ghost along. In this case, a light small vessel with minimal wetted surface area could have an advantage over a large heavy frigate. In heavy air the frigate with its much longer waterline length and greater stiffness allowing it to carry sail would give it an advantage. Point of sail was also important. Small sloops and schooners could often sail closer to the wind than square riggers, so they were hard to catch if upwind of their larger prey. On the other hand a small sloop chased off the wind in heavy air by a frigate would be in a dangerous situation. Roger
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The reason for staggering joints in planking was of course to avoid a weak spot in the hull girder. In this case the guards are not longitudinally continuous so do not contribute to the longitudinal hull strength. Furthermore, the major longitudinal strength member for these river craft were the hogging chains. I therefore see no reason why joints in the guard planking need to be staggered. The hull itself is of course a different matter. Roger
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- sidewheeler
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In “Vasa, A Swedish Warship”, Fred Hocker discusses the colors found on Vasa, and they are much brighter than obe would expect. He also points out that Vasa is an exception, a warship specifically designed and built to emphasize the prestige and status of the Royal house of Vasa. These bright colors, many using pigments of ground semi precious metals would not be found on more humble ships. i believe that the best work on colors for US vessels built in the 1800’s is Eric Ronnberg’s article published in the Nautical Research Journal. Abridged versions are to be found in the NRG’s shop notes and on their website.
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Michael, Great to see that you are now again working on this wonderful model. Another Michael (MikeB4) recently included a post about a model of the US flagged passenger ship African Enterprise c1950 that he found in a flea market. He said that it is kind of rough and you immediately came to mind as the guy who could return it to its former glory. Roger
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Rope-Stropped Blocks for Boom Vang
Roger Pellett replied to Julie Mo's topic in Masting, rigging and sails
The fictitious tackle above is an example of relying too heavily on old models as primary evidence for constructing historically accurate models. This is especially true of rigging which being fragile is often repaired or completely replaced. The book from which the drawing was taken documents the models of three vessels in the Statens Sjohistoriska Museet in Sweden. The author makes no attempt to note anachronisms or physically impossible arrangements limiting the book’s usefulness. Roger -
Very nice! Unlike many small boats built from kits, this actually looks like a ship’s boat of the period. Nice workmanship too. Roger
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Perhaps not 4in x 4in but Steele says that floor timbers for a 32ft longboat are sided 3in, moulded 5-1/4 in at the throat and 3in at the head. Futtocks were sided 3in, moulded 3in at the heel x 2-3/4in at the head. These were heavily built boats intended for hard use. Roger
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- medway longboat
- Syren Ship Model Company
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Since you have an owners manual, presumably you have scale drawings. Xerox to the correct scale, get a block of close grained hard wood and srart cutting away everything that does not look like a Hercules engine! Kidding aside, there is an NRJ article, I think 2001 written by a guy who built a 1:12 Buda Diesel engine for a US Navy 1940 admiral’s launch. He started with a block of casting resin. A straight six engine should not be difficult to carve. Roger
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If you go to the beginning of Ed Tosi’s series of posts in Scratch built models above you will find an extensive discussion regarding Young America’s hull lines. Roger
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Mast rake is also used to adjust the “balance” of a sailing vessel. If the vessel under sail tries to head up into the wind it is said to have a weather helm. The opposite, where the boat heads downwind is called a lee helm. Raking the masts changes the geometric center upon which the wind forces act thus correcting the lee or weather helm. There are accounts during the age of sail where Captains changed mast rake or even mast position to improve their ship’s performance. Roget
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Today I finished my serving machine. The only specially purchased parts were the two alligator clips. Everything else came from the scrap box. I picked the gears up as samples at a trade show many years ago, but never found a use for them. Much to my surprise the thing actually works, Now I can get busy and rig my longboat. Roger
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Re: Stacked Boats i don’t know what period the above Constitution model represents but by mid Nineteenth Century US practice was to nest the cutters in the 1st and 2nd launches. All of the thwarts in the launches were removable. When in use thwarts were fastened by iron pins into heavy clamps worked into the boat’s interior structure. This allowed the stack of boats to be considerably lowered. See: William Brady, The Kedge Anchor. Roger
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Gondola by AntonyUK
Roger Pellett replied to AntonyUK's topic in - Build logs for subjects built 1901 - Present Day
I highly recommend the book Gondola, An Extraordinary Naval Architecture, by Carlo Donatelli (listed in Wefalk’s comprehensive bibliography above). This large, beautifully produced book covers gondola design and construction in detail. The book was originally published in Italian but my copy is an English translation. The book mentions a set of gondola plans in the Museo Storico di Venezia that the author translated into a CAD file. Roger -
Copper sheathing was attached to ships’ hulls with copper nails, not rivets. At a scale of 1:64 a 1/2in nail head would scale less than .01in diameter (less than .25mm) and the head would barely protrude from the surface of the plate. The embossed nail heads on the plates that you show above are way over scale. At this scale, I would question to show fastenings at all. Roger
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- pickle
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Yes, mine is stamped 1942 on the bottom.
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Some of them were made into ash trays. My father-in-law brought this one back from Florida Island in the South Pacific at the end of WW II.
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