Roger Pellett

Spectacular models!  Alabama’s straighter stem and small radius forefoot would produce finer forward hull lines.  

Roger

Pam,

Sorry, but it’s hard to help you without more information.  Who built the model?  

To what scale was it built (this should be on the name plate).  Can you post some photos? And as Mark has posted, where is the model located?

Roger

There is a lengthy series of articles in the Nautical Research Journal, perhaps 20 years ago of the research that went into the construction of a model of Kearsarge.  Anyone wanting to build a model of this historic would definitely benefit from these articles.  I recall that it was not a straightforward process.

Roger

Yes, Steel’s book is English but it details rigging practices for large warships in the late 1700’s- Early 1900’s.  It Is a Primary Source as it was actually written at the time that you are concerned with.  The Anatomy of the Ship book mentioned above is a Secondary Source.  It was written a few years ago by a German author living in Australia.  Chances are, he based any rigging details on Steel or a book like it.  I am unaware of any book written in the late 1700’s- Early 1800’s that details American rigging rigging practices.

Nail Polish - just go to any store selling cosmetics and buy the cheapest lacquer based clear nail polish on the shelf.

Roger

More random thoughts:

Your model building plans involve building three very different models:  A late Eighteenth Century warship, A mid Nineteenth Century whaling ship, and a late Nineteenth Century merchant vessel.  The rigging of each of these will be different.  First, like everything else, rigging was affected by the industrial revolution.  Cutty Sark will have much more iron rigging elements than Constitution.  Cutty Sark’s owners also had a financial incentive to operate their vessels with small crews, unlike Constitution that required large crews to fight the ship.  This resulted in changes to the rigging, the most obvious being splitting of the large top sails in two on merchant vessels built in the second half of the 1800’s.  And, of course, as a specialized vessel, Charles W. Morgan would have rigging peculiar to her trade.

Unfortunately for you, there is no one rigging book that will work for all three projects.  Underhill deals with later Nineteenth merchant ships.  I would recommend Steel’ Masting and Rigging for Constitution.  You should be able to find an affordable reprint.  There has recently been an ongoing discussion (maybe you?) on MSW about rigging sources for Charles W. Morgan.  I would call, not email, the Mystic Seaport bookshop to see what they might have.  Underhill can wait until you actually tackle Cutty Sark unless you can find a used bargain somewhere along the way.  If building accurate ship models is “your thing” books are a lifetime investment.

I personally like lacquer, not acrylic, clear nail polish for a rigging adhesive.  It comes in a little bottle with the brush in the top.  It is cheap convenient, and quick drying.

Actually, CA is an abbreviation for Crappy Adhesive! 😀. I don’t use it.

Roger

If you have shakey hands like I do, try to minimize the number of moving parts.  I made a simple vice similar to those used by fly tyers.  It used an alligator clip to hold blocks, dead eyes, etc. while I stropped them.

Roger

Special rigging tools are not difficult to make.  Take the plunge and you’ll discover your limitations, then make a tool to overcome them.  Most rigging tools can be made from needles, wire, dowels, and alligator clips.  A trip to Your local fabric or sewing store might have some inexpensive tools that you could use too.  You might eventually want to buy a serving machine; see Syren’s Serv-O-Matic.  On the other hand, if you have some plastic gears, one of these is also not hard to make.

Roger

Rick,

If you go to the Scratch Build Logs, 1801-1850 you will find a build log for the American Ship of the Line, USS New York.  By his own admission, the builder uses the system for planking espoused by the American Comedian Larry the Cable Guy: Git er done!  It’s pretty rough.  He ends up, however, with a spectacular model.

Roger

You are building a model of a steel hulled vessel.  That means showing a beautifully executed planking job is silly and historically inaccurate.  Goop is your friend.  Durham’s Rock Hard Water Putty comes to mind.  Spread it on with a putty knife, let it harden and sand it down until you get a smooth hull.

Roger

As usual it would help greatly if we knew where you lived.  Both Ace Hardware and Menards have large selections of odd ball screws, nuts, and bolts.  Menards selection includes Minirature sizes.

Roger

Not exactly what you are asking for but this might be helpful:

In November 1966 the 600ft long ore carrier Daniel J. Morrell broke in half and sank during a gale on Lake Huron.  Of the crew of approximately 30, there was one survivor; Dennis Hale. He has written two books about his experience; Sole Survivor and Shipwrecked: Reflections on Sole Survivor. Both are currently available on Amazon.

Roger

Just stumbled onto this.  Wow! A spectacular model.

Roger

Beautiful work!

I agree with CPDDET’s post above.  Rub the old finish down with FINE wet/dry sandpaper.  Try 400 grit.  Once the glossy finish Is dull,  wipe down with a soft cloth and repaint. Chemicals  are unnecessary and you don’t know how they’ll react with either the old paint or the plastic hull material.

Roger

Thanks Jaager.  I was at our local Mernards Store and bought solvents that I keep on hand in my shop.  They have Xylol.

Roger

Unfortunately for model builders, Booklets of General Plans do not include hull lines drawings; essential for scratch building.  There is an Anatomy of the Ship book for HMS Camperdown; one of the 50 Four Stack Destroyers furnished to Great Britain under Lend-Lease that does include hull lines.  This could supplement Borchers’ Book.

Roger

For those of lucky enough to have access to Floquil paints what thinner is used? They used to sell a thinner call Diosol (?) but does anyone know what it’s active ingredient was?

Roger

My professional career involved engineering of piping systems mostly for large power plants.  These were huge assemblies, prefabricated in our shop and shipped to the field for erection.  Chicago area members may be familiar with the Chicago Bulls Red bridge spanning the Chicago River, next to the Vienna Beef wiener plant.  Each arch was shipped in two pieces over the Lakes by barge.  The arches were made from large diameter pipe (approximately 1 meter diameter) and bent in our shop.  The pieces had to fit exactly.

Practice in our engineering department was to only use known dimensions on drawings or to calculate dimensions based on known drawing dimensions.  Scaling and Slide Rule calculations were not permitted.  Instead, piping engineers and draftsmen used Smoleys Tables.  These were logarithmic based tables that shortened calculations.  As part of my training, I spent some time in the estimating department.  My boss, an old timer, expected the same degree of precision as the engineering department; Smoleys Tables and all.  Later, when I ran the estimating department, and later the Engineering Department,  electronic calculators were available.  I also allowed and used architect scales for cost estimating.  Their accuracy was good enough for this purpose.  The bridge above was drafted using CAD, that we began to use in the early 1990’s.

Naval Architecture presents some special problems as hull lines are not necessarily regular geometric shapes.  Given the same table of offsets, different Naval Architects using manual drafting techniques will each produce slightly different lines drawings.  This happens because of the need to produce “fair” lines.  When plotting offset dimensions, very slight differences in technique will produce slightly different curves.  Strictly s peaking there in no right or wrong answer as long as all curves are fair and all points match in the three views.  While CAD might seem to be a solution to this problem,  all CAD programs do not necessarily I use the same algorithm for fairing offset dimensions.  One Naval Architect has observed, “No matter what I feed into the computer, the hull comes out looking like a J-24.

Roger

Bob,  No sarcasm intended.  If I were to build another wooden model, I would repeat the acrylic paint experiment again.  It worked well and seems to be holding up fine in the model’s glass cased environment.

My present project will have virtually no exposed wooden surfaces.  The hull shell plating is shellacked paper and the rest of the model brass.  It is also small scale, 1:96 as opposed to 1:32 for my last project, and paint film thickness matters..  I like Floquil paint.  It lays down a nice thin film.  I have some unopened bottles bought years ago and have found the rest on EBay.

Roger

I did recently complete a paint job for a model using homebrew acrylic paints.  I started with a small selection of quality acrylic artist paints.  These come in tubes. Quality is important as you need finely ground pigments.  I mixed my own 18th Century colors; a dull red and Drab.  I mixed the resulting color with some acrylic Matt Medium, and thinned the mixture to airbrush consistency.  It worked well.

Would I do it again?  At the moment I’m supplementing my stash of Floquil Paints for use on my current project!

Roger

Jacques, Great Post! You underestimate the significance of what you are doing. With few exceptions, producing historic models requires research, weighing sometimes conflicting evidence, and ultimately making decisions.  When you buy a kit, or plans marketed to modelmakers, someone has made these decisions for you and you don’t have the benefit of evaluating their evidence.

Novices interested in scratch building models of simple craft  should arm themselves with a copy of Howard Chapelle’s History of American Small Sailing Craft.  Plans from this book are available from the Smithsonian.

Roger

Coke made from coal is one of the three essential ingredients in smelting iron ore into iron which is then further processed into steel.  Close proximity to deposits of coal and cheap waterbourne transportation of iron ore (Minnesota) and limestone (Michigan) over the Great Lakes caused the American steel industry to locate in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio.

Steel was not commonly available in bulk quantity prior to the invention of the Bessemer Converter in the 1850’s. Before that iron ore was smelted into high carbon cast iron and wrought iron, a mixture of low carbon iron and slag.  I believe that this was usually done using charcoal as fuel/ reducing agent.

Coal was also reduced to provide gas for lighting.  Many cities had their “City Gas” plants; one being located in Washington DC’s Foggy Bottom of Watergate fame.  Presumably coal tar would have been a byproduct of this had anyone bothered to collect It.

I, therefore, wonder if Coal tar was available in the US prior to the development of the industrial steel making process and widespread gas lighting in the later years of the Nineteenth Century.

Roger

There have been literally millions of ships and boats since the cave man first floated across the river on his log.  This means that there is a wide variety of subjects to model.  While I agree that the three subject Model Shipways series of kits will result in attractive models, I cannot help but think that by focusing on POB kits most model builders are unnecessarily limiting their horizons.  There is no reason why an intelligent but inexperienced person cannot  scratch build a unique model.  I suggest that novices concerned about “taking the plunge” check out JacquesCousteau’s models of indigenous Mexican Craft.  ( Scratch Built Models 1900 -Present).  These models are being built by a novice using limited tools and materials on hand.  Before the Mary Rose was salvaged and studied a noted British model maker made a model of her- Two mastheads with circular tops sticking out of the water.

Roger

Bob,  the tapes that we used were retractable tape measures.  Alvin still sells one but only in 1/8 in and 1/4 in scale.

Another possibility would be one of the Plastic scales that were used in Drafting Machines prior to CAD.  These came in 12 in and 18in lengths; each scribed in two related scales, eg. 3/8 and 3/4 in.  They had aluminum attachments but these can be easily removed and the holes used for fastening to the workbench.  Google- Drafting Machine Scales and you will find them.

Roger

Thanks!

I was thinking of using it for the wooden hatch covers for my Benjamin Noble Lake Freighter Model.  The builders drawings specify 2in x 6in white pine planking for each hatch cover and there were 12 hatch covers per hatch.  At 1:96 scale each plank would scale 1/16in wide by about .025 in thick.  I could probably sneak by at 1/32in.  I have since decided on another approach.

Roger