Roger Pellett

It seems that my Sherline mill gets used at least as often to build tools/fixtures as it does to make actual model parts. Examples are a fixture for holding propeller blades in the right orientation for soldering and a fixture to hold the very mall blades of my model makers spoke shaves in my honing guide. This means that I use it for materials that do not actually get incorporated into a model- often aluminum.

Roger

I have never posted any pictures of my models on this or any other site. Noted naval architect L. Francis Herreshoff describes this process in his book The L. Francis Herreshoff Reader. Another good source is Modelling Open Boats by Eric Freestone.

Roger

I have built several models of warships boats with carved hulls. I am presently building a 1:32 model of a Royal Navy longboat. All of these models require the hulls to be thinned out on the inside until the hull becomes a hollow shell. Many years ago, I began building carved hulls by carving two half models to be joined after carving. This has several advantages.

1. There is always a defined centerline

2. As carving proceeds each half hull can be laid on a flat surface representing the keel plane for checking with templates resulting in a very accurate hull.

3. It is much easier to hollow out two half hulls than one full one.

4. With some pre-planning the keel can be sandwiched between the two hull halves.

For my last couple of models, I have been making three sub assemblies, two halves and a keel and incorporating as much work as possible in each before joining them together.

Roger

The time has come for me to buy a jewelers saw. I used to own one and never was able to use it properly. I either had trouble tightening the blade in the grips or tightening the frame properly. As a result I broke blades and was never able to properly control cuts. It finally broke trying to tighten the blade grips and I never replaced.

In shopping on line for a new one, it is hard to see what I am getting, and I don't live near where I can see and try one. Any suggestions? I am particularly interested in the system to tighten and to hold the blade. Are there differences between different saws?

Roger

The boat that I am thinking about would also be called a "punt."

Roger

It would look like what your neighbors here to the south call a "Jon Boat" except that both the bow and stern would be curved up unlike the Jon boat where just the bow is curved. If you look up Jon boat on the web you'll find lots of examples. The top sides should flare outwards to gain buoyancy and stability when heavily loaded.

Roger

If I were designing this boat for Charon, my design would feature rectangular mid ships section and full stern. In the movie clip, Charon stands up in the stern and propels the boat by poling. Even though he is a skeleton, displacement in the stern is necessary to support his weight. The creepy nature of the whole thing means that the boat moves very slowly so full hull lines do not effect resistance. Operating in protected waters he is unlikely to encounter heavy cross seas so range of stability is not much of a consideration. High initial stability is a desirable feature because he operates the boat standing up and passengers are always getting off and on, so a flat bottom design (rectangular mid ships section) is called for. Last but not least, the activities of the four horsemen of the Apocolypse- Disease, War, Famine, and Pestilance? Require the ability to carry large passenger loads- high cubic capacity.

The most rational design is therefore a rectangular barge with raking ends.

Roger Pellett

Unfortunately, I don't have access to my library at the moment but I believe that there is quite a bit of information on the first Constellation You might want to obtain a copy of "The Constellation Question" by Howard Chapelle and Len Pollard. This book has quite a bit of original source material for both vessels. Used copies are available cheap on the Internet. A second source would be Naval Ducuments of the Barbary Wars published by the Navy Department. This book contains drawings reprinted from the National Archives in a pocket. There was also an article in the Nautical Research Journal I believe about 1980 on this warship. Last, there was a book published 10 years ago or so about sailing warships of the U.S. Navy. I believe that the author is Donald Canney.

Roger

Consider buying one of the "Cobra" brand replacement springs available from any of the on-line quality woodworking suppliers. These are heavy duty and I believe are available to fit Delta saws. I have a 40 or so year old 14in Sprunger bandsaw and actually ran it for several years without a spring after the original one broke. Last year I bought one of the Cobra springs and it works fine.

IItnsounds like the spring in your saw was improperly heat treated.

Roger

Have you tried Bondo? It is east to mix, hardens quickly, sands to an invisible feather edge and is cheap. 30 Yeats ago I build a clyindrical body od the boiler for steam cutter model by turning a slug of Bondo on a metal lathe. It has held up well. I should also add that it bonds well to wood. I keep a can in my shop and use it often.

For those readers from across the pond, Bondo is the proprietary name for a polyester paste putty used by the auto body repair trade.

Roger

A number of wrecks from the Penobscot expedition have been investigated. There is an interesting article published a number of years ago in the Nautical Research Journal discussing variations in framing systems discovered on the several wrecks investigated. Without digging through my pile of NRJ's I am guessing that the article was mid 1990's and might have been written by Clayton Feldman.

There are several posts discussing essential modelling books. In my opinion, the best and most cost effective collection of research material available are the CD's of past Nautical Research Journals available from the NRG office.

Roger

Hi Ed,

The full name of the book is An Outline of Shipbuilding, Theoretical and Practical by Theodore D. Wilson. If you Google the full title the first entry is the scanned image of the book. My browser does not provide an exact web address but the above should work.

The availability of this book is a result of Google's project to scan and post rare books online. It is fortunate for ship modelers that one of the two university libraries picked was the one at the University of Michigan because Michigan has had for the past 130 years a Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering department, hence a good collection of old shipbuilding manuals.

If you decide to order this book, I got the hard bound version published by Michigan. Michigan did a nice job of publishing the book BUT it is missing a couple of pages-the last page contains masting rules for warships boats and three Plates presumably showing the lines of a sloop of war. Neither of these omissions would prevent me from buying this book again. There are also paper backed versions but if printed from the same scan would omit the same material.

Roger

The principal mode of structural failure in a long ship hull is hogging or sagging due to longitudinal bending. For wooden ships excessive hull flexing causes planks to move relative to each other squeezing out the caulking. The great multi masted schooners in particular suffered from this and required constant pumping.

An unbraced wooden hull can be likened to a stack of boards supported by two saw horses. If you sit in the middle. The stack flexes with each board moving relative to its neighbor. If you nail the same stack together it is much much stiffer as planks cannot slide relative to each other. The forces causing these planks to slide relative to each other are called shear forces.

In a wooden ship, the hull frames provide little or no longitudinal strength as being perpendicular to the planks they do not resist these shear forces. The iron strapping introduces a diagonal restraint into the hull to resist shear forces that move the hull planks. Strapping is not required on the ship's bottom or deck as these are subject only to tensile or compression forces, not shear.

I recently purchased a University of Michigan reprint of an Outline of Shipbuilding by T. D. Wilson, originally published in 1873. This book is also a free on line download. It reflects naval practice but the navy was still building wooden ships in 1873. The book includes a section on diagonal reinforcement. According to Wilson, standard practice was to attach strapping to the inside of the frames as it made subsequent hull repairs easier, but ships of the Congress and Severn class had strapping for 150 feet of the outside of the hull (the amidships area) as well. The Florida and Tennesee were completely strapped on both the inside and outside. These were both long, fine lined vessels, and a lack of buoyancy in their fine lined ends would have increased hogging stresses.

Roger

BOb,

A great rememberence. I hadn't realized that the company is still in business, but your right, the knowhow to produce the kind of quality that they did 70 years ago is probably lost forever. While I understand how they might have turned a 1/8th inch to the foot capstan on a lathe, I can't figure out how they machined the flutes on the same piece.

I dug out my copy of McCann's book and from what I can see the Soverign of the Seas model compares favorably with the plans in the book. The book was published in 1931. I believe that the model was built in the 30's or later.

Roger

I have two models built from A. J. Fisher kits between 1940 and 1945 by my late father. One, a completed fishing trawler and the other a Flying Cloud, hull completed but unrigged. I still have all of the rigging parts but choose to display the model just as he left it. Needless to say I treasure them both, not as museum quality models, which they are not, but as a link to him.

In those days, A. J. Fisher was the Cadillac or perhaps Rolls Royce model kit producer. Wooden fittings- gratings, blocks, barrels, buckets and ladders were made from boxwood- the real stuff. Other fittings- capstans, windlasses, bells etc were machined from brass. Steering wheels were actually made with machined brass spindles inserted into a turned "fiber" ring that looks like mahogany. Some brass fittings specifically anchors and windlasses were furnished with a black oxidized finish. While not perhaps entirely accurate for the exact ship being modeled, their fittings are minirature replicas of real seagoing equipment. Some fittings such as bollards and figureheads were cast from what they called white metal and while it may contain lead the ones on my models have not oxidized over 70 years. I have no idea how they ever commercially produced this stuff!

the capstan in your photo looks like it may be one of their fittings. Check to see if it's brass. The steering wheel looks heavier than the one on my Flying Cloud. If it's a casting, I doubt if they made it. There are a couple of old A. J. Fisher Catalogs for sale on the Internet. One which is for sale on EBay is coincidentally open to the page describing their Soverign of the Seas kit.

Another source that you might to consider would be a book written in the 30's by E. Armitage McCann describing construction of a model of the Soverign of the Seas. It is possible that your builder built the model from plans contained in this book and made/bought fittings as necessary. Last night, I checked and their was a copy on a used book website for $0.99.

I agree with other responders that a careful restoration should yield a nice decorative model representative of 1930's era ship modeling.

As you have probably learned by reading these posts choice of tools is extremely personal, which I guess is what makes this avocation so fascinating. I received a Dremel type rotary tool as a gift many years ago and almost never use it. On the other hand, a small Jarmac disc sander on my workbench is used constantly.

If your project requires accurate drilling of holes square to a surface you will need a drill press, and I see no point to buying a minirature one. Inexpensive pin vices are available to allow tiny wire sized drills to be used with a full sized Chuck.

I mill my own woods whenever possible. For this I find a jointer essential to get a flat surface that the table saw will accept. A full sized table saw with a heavy duty motor is essential. Dull blades and an underpowered saw are dangerous. Although I have a 12in portable planer it is noisy, and dirty, so I am not sure that I will go thru the hassle to drag it out doors to mill the fourth surface flat on a batch of pear wood. This same operation can be done on my table saw.

A number of years ago I built a thickness sander from NRG plans. Cost was almost nothing- a pair of bearing blocks a d a piece of cold rolled steel rod. I had a spare motor and everything else came from scrap.

I like old power tools. They are generally of more robust construction and easy to repair. My bandsaw is 40 years old, the company that built it is long out of business, yet I rebuilt it last summer with new urethane tires, a new tension spring, and new "cool" guide blocks. No plastic and all screws are std us threads available at the hardware store. Old used tools are often for sale cheap- overlooked by those that want tools with all the electronic gadgetry.

Roger Pellett

Rockier makes a Thin Rip Tablesaw Jig that allows repeatable thickness cuts to be made away from the fence (the wood is not pinched between the fence and the blade. I have used this to saw thin planking.

Roger Pellett