Roger Pellett

Actually, there is a lot of published information available on the rigging of the Fair American. The Nautical Research Guild published a series of articles twenty years ago or so on this topic. My recollection of the articles is that the Naval Academy's model was rerigged in the 1920's by Charles Davis who included many anachrostic features such as a dolphin striker not used at the time when the ship was in service. Therefore, if you are making a model of the Naval Academy model the rigging doesn't represent actual practice anyway. Reprints are cheap. Look on their web site.

On the other hand at one time the MS model kit included a monograph written by Eric Ronnberg. Eric is a thorough and meticulous researcher. And if your kit still uses Eric's plans and instructions I would be surprised if a lot of information is missing. If not, you might want to track down Eric's monograph and plans.

Roger

Some time ago as part of a build log of the USS Constitution, someone was building one of these "cages" and doing a beautiful job of it. Actually, I believe that these are frames for supporting canvas canopies for bad weather. He left them as bright brass as they are on the real size USS Constitution today. These ships had very large crews with plenty of time on their hands to polish the brass.

Roger

A "must" attachment for the Sherline mill is their Sensitive Drilling Attachment useful for drilling holes with very small wire sized drill bits. This is particularly useful for making blocks and deadeyes and essential if you don't have a drill press. I don't know if the other mills that you are considering can be used with such an attachment.

Regarding size of milling cutters. With the Sherline mill and the right collets you can always use the smaller mills (1/8in shank) but with the smaller mills you can't use the larger ones.

Roger

If the Proxxon milling machine is limited to cutters with shaft diameters 3.2 mm and under that is a major limitation. I have a Sherline Milling column that converts my Sherline lathe for milling. I have a 3/8in tool holder that (I think) came with the column and a set of milling collets that I bought. This allows me to use standard 3/8in and 1/4in spiral end mills available from any local industrial supply house.

Roger

I agre with Chuck, I just made some thimbles from standard hobby shop K &S brass tubing although I used a somewhat different method- I hadn't seen his post at the time. From some solid brass round bar I machined male and female dies. The male die was just a cylinder with a nipple machined on one end. The diameter of the nipple a slip fit for the id of the brass tube thimble stock.. I left a small radius between at the shoulder between the nipple and the round bar. As long as the diameter of the round bar is larger than the of of the brass tubing the actual diameter is unimportant.

The female die was just the same round bar stock with a hole center drilled. The diameter of rhe hole a slip fit with the male die nipple.

To make,a thimble,I first chucked the tubing in my lathe's head stock with only a sixteenth or so protruding. I chucked the male die in the tail stock. After turning on the lathe I fed the male die into the hole in the tubing. When the shoulder between the nipple and the round bar came in contact with the tubing it flared it. I then parted it off with a razor saw.

I then reversed the piece of tubing on the male die so that the flared end was pointing towards the lathe headstock, and I chucked the female die in the headstock. I started up the lathe and fed the male die into the female die, flaring the second end.

It was much easier than it sounds.

Roger

I'm amazed that you are able to machine the window mullions without the cross grained areas collapsing, even using the Costello Boxwood.

Roger

Don't forget, the weight of the gear and the bending loads from the capstan were in large part, resisted by the ball race below the gear. This very large and (early ?) example of a ball bearing would not needed to be lubricated.

Roger

Gold dry transfer letters?

Roger

Rob,

Have you looked into a model of the whaling brig Kate Corey? This model was based on information developed by Eric Ronnberg. Eric is an excellent model builder and researcher of New England fishing and whaling vessels. I have not built this kit and cannot voucher for its quality but as far as research and plans are concerned what Eric does is more than first class.

Roger

Re: Your concern regarding the transom

Why not paint it, say a semi gloss dark blue (just the transom, not the whole boat!). This would provide a nice contrast with your diagonally planked wooden hull and would provide a great background for lettering. Gold lettering would look good and would be appropriate. Fill it first with a filler that hardens, even Bondo. This will give you another chance to get some sharp well defined edges between transom and hull.

Just an idea.

Roger

Maury,

I would like you to encourage to not use spar tables but to model the spars as shown on the drawings. There are two reasons for this:

First, the drawings are documentary evidence of the way this craft was intended to be built. They were carefully drawn, if not by Grice himself, than by a skilled marine draftsman who knew what he was doing. There is no reason that the rig and spar dimensions are any less accurate than other features shown on the drawings that you have incorporated into the model such as the gear arrangement or the hull lines.

Second, it is logical that the mast would be heavier than one shown in spar tables for a sloop of this size. Spars on an ordinary sailing vessel would be sized to support the sails. Thie mast on this vessel served as a derrick lifting very heavy loads like the anchor shown on the drawing. This would place a large bending moment on the spar. While the array of backstays was intended to counterbalance this, I believe that the mast would have been beefed up to resist these bending moments as well.

Roger

Why not put your bench where you intend to do your detailed hand work under the window so at least part of the time you have natural light? I find that bench top power tools work quite well with light from overhead recesed overhead fluorescent fixtures. I second having a dedicated circuit breaker box in your shop and you can't have enough outlets. On the other hand, I run a 10in contractors saw to mill hardwoods satisfactorily on 110v.

Roger

Charlie,

If you have not already done so, before deciding on a color scheme for these models I would obtain a copy of Eric Ronnberg's excellent article on period correct paints from the Nautical Research Guild. It is from Volume 36, issue 4 downloadable from their web site.

Roger

Nice job!

Roger

Maury, Yes, I agree that other then showing the basic gear train the Grice drawing does not provide the necessary details. In that case, I generally try to find out what the state of the art was at the period in question.

In this case, I believe that the technology was not available in the US to machine involute pattern gear teeth in a large iron wheel like this. On the other hand examples exist in England of large wooden gear trains in water mills. For example see www.whitemill.org. There is another example of an iron gear wheel with wooden teeth. The teeth were shaped from a hard wood like apple and were inserted into cavities cast in the iron wheel. This approach was favored as the teeth were the "weak link" that would fail first and could be easily replaced.

The famous marine engineer Benjamin Franklin Isherwood used a wooden gear train in the late 1860's (40 years later than your period) to increase revolutions of the main engines of the high speed cruiser USS Wampanoag. The gears supposedly wore 5/8in during the vessel's sea trial.

You are to be congratulated on building this model of a usual and unique craft. You are doing a great job.

Roger

Maury,

Yes and no. The vertical forces thansferred to the vessel's structure by the gear's weight are primarily resisted by the ball race but as this race is not rigid it would be expected to deflect and some of this load would have been transferred to the keelson.

The gear's effect on the center of gravity of the vessel's hull would be at the vertical height of a plane passing through its vertical centerline.

Are you sure that this gear was a one piece casting? It could have been built up from cast segments bolted together, cast iron segments bolted to a wooden spoked wheel, or it could have been entirely wooden like those seen in water mills.

Roger

Over many years I have used enamels, and laquers - Floquill, Humbrol, and even indoor alkyd trim paint mixed in "historic colors." All produced results that I considered to be satisfactory with varying levels of difficulty.

After reading articles written by Eric Ronnberg and Rob Napier in the Nautical Research Journal I decided to try acrylics artist's colors on my latest project. I have been mixing these to develop my own colors that I believe to be period correct. I mix the colors from the tubes to make the pigment. I add some matt medium, and then thin with water for a consistency that will work with my air brush. Thicker mixes can be used for brushing.

I am sold on this approach. By spraying multiple very thin coats runs are not a problem. Clean up is easy, and the paint dries quickly. The paint produces a smooth egg shell finish that works with my 1:32 modeling scale. It was surprisingly easy to mix colors by eye. The colors are available at any artist supply store.

Roger

Thanks, Les

Thanks, Jaager,

I have a roll of .005 in copper approx 1/2 in at scale. Not too over scale for hull plating. Much softer than brass so maybe it might work better than the harder brass, which I hadn't annealed. Maybe this might work with the transfer tape.

Roger

For more years than I care to remember I have been building a model of the Great Lakes Steamship Benjamin Noble. A couple of years ago, I started to plate the hull with brass sheet stock using 3M transfer tape. This tape is adhesive deposited on a waxed paper backing. The tape is applied to the brass plate, the paper is peeled off and the plate is now coated with adhesive. Plates are approximately 1in by 3in. After laying down one strake of plating, I let the hull sit for a week or so and found that the tape had failed to hold the corners of the plates. The model has been sitting while I work on another project.

I am now to the point to try again, this time using copper sheet secured with contact cement but the brands of cement that I have found all say don't use with copper or copper bearing alloys. Considering the number of copper sheathed hulls that have been made, someone must have discovered a contact cement that is compatible with copper.

Any advice?

Roger

My experience is that sharp corners and fiberglass don't get along well. The glass fiber wants to float on the resin precluding sharp corners. It might be easier to cast the sonar dome in place once you have glassed the hull.

Roger

I don't know if this would work with your kit model but I built the bow platform and the stern sheet platform for a longboat that I am building by first fitting a piece of very thin model builders plywood That is available as thin as 1/64 in (approximately 1/2 mm). I then glued the boxwood planking to the plywood.

Roger

Daniel,

I don't know whether your query is to support construction of a model or for some different purpose, but another source that discusses brace winches and rhe ships that carried them is Allan Villers' The Way of a Ship. There is a good isometric sketch of a brace winch in this book by Harold Underhill. Villers' perspective is that of a practical sailor who actually used this gear.

Roger

John Harland's book Capstans and Windlasses available used from Amazon for $9.98 includes a chapter on brace winches and the Jarvis winch in particular. Illustrations are not great, not as good as Nils posted above, but there is useful written descriptive material that would appear to be the kind of stuff that you're looking for.

Roger

Thanks.

Roger