Roger Pellett

In the Odyssey, the mast is raised each time the vessels put to sea. In confined waters this can be daily as the ships are beached each night.   Having done this many times in small craft, the easiest way is for someone in the boat to “walk the mast up” starting at the stern and moving forward.  I can see how this same technique would have been used by these ancient sailors.  This would have involved several crewmen.  With the mast vertical, it was probably too heavy and awkward to lift it into a hole in a mast step.  A vertical post that the upright mast could be lashed to would seem to make sense.

Roger

I keep a tube of Duco cement on my workbench.  I use it for temporary glue joints such as the brass/plywood sandwiches that I make for ripping brass strips on my Byrnes Saw.  The cement allows the plywood to be peeled away from the brass strip after sawing.

I buy mine at our local Ace Hardware.  A tube costs less than $5.00.

Roger

A nice pond yacht, and. I’m sure that she’ll love it.  

Roger

The Longboat rig shown in the drawing in May’s book does not have backstays.

In 2018 we stayed in St. Ives in Cornwall while touring the UK.  There were two lug rigged boats in the harbor that apparently sailed on a regular schedule with passengers. Every afternoon they would sail into the harbor which required several tacks.  While the rig may be called a dipping lug, each tack involved completely dropping the sail and resetting it.  In that case the sail could always be set on the lee side of the stay.

Furthermore, Bligh was making a long passage, not tacking into a small harbor every day.  He could set his sails anticipating that he could remain on the same tack for quite a while.  

What I am saying is that stays could be rigged as he saw fit without being concerned about fouling the sails.

Roger

The Medway Longboat is of course much different from the boat that you and Craig are discussing as she is sloop rigged.  Furthermore, I wonder if her rigging has been tampered with as is the case with many of these old models.  I based my Longboat model on the drawing in May’s book.  The rigging shown is particularly interesting and workable compared to some. Features on the Medway model.

Paintings and drawings of two masted lug rigged boats in hid book (see cover painting) show masts further apart than sketch above.  Rig is also a ketch with mainsail forward.  Mays also raises the possibility that these two masted rigs might have employed sprit sails.

Roger

You can’t go wrong with a full set of Chapelle’s books.  Like Jaager and Dr PR posted you have very nice editions of the two that you bought.  I also particularly like his American Small Sailing Craft.  My library has grown to well over 100 books collected during my adult life.  I find books dealing with ship history more useful over time than “how to build ship model” books, as I try to develop my own model building techniques that fit my personal skills and interests.

Roger

How about no stays?  With shrouds led slightly aft they might have been unnecessary.

Roger

It sounds to me like your saw needs a tune up.  The rip fence must be parallel to the blade.  Actually, the Byrnes saw fence provides a slight relief behind the blade but that’s a detail you can ignore.  Check the alignment using the crosscut groove in the table top as a datum.  If you have access to a dial indicator clamp it to your miter gage, and clamp the rip fence down tight.  When the indicator tip touches the fence set it to 0.  Slide it along the fence and adjust the fence alignment until the gage doesn’t deviate from 0.  If you don’t have a dial indicator you can do the same thing by clamping a block of wood to your miter gage that touches the fence and then adjusting the fence until the miter gage slides back and forth while still touching the fence.  A feeler gage can help you to make sure that the block is touching.  Even a Byrnes saw will not cut with a misaligned fence.

Roger

The original “Split Granado” was built by South African builder Robert Lichtley, and a series of articles detailing its construction were published in early issues of the British magazine Model Shipwright.  I think, late 1970’s.  Old Model Shipwright issues can often be found on EBay and in used book dealer inventories.  If you can pin down and buy the issues that you need you will have a better set of instructions than you will find in any model kit.

I believe that Lichtley built a fully framed model, added planking, and actually sawed it in half.

Roger

Jeffboat was the last of the “upriver” riverboat shipyards to close.  It had a very long history having built steamboats in the 1800’s.  It was acquired, I think in the 1990’s, along with Dravo’s National Marine barge line by American Commercial Barge Line, then a subsidiary of the Chessie Railroad System.  The resulting organization was principally a barge towing company.  In the last 20 years the company has changed hands and reorganized several times including  a leveraged buyout, and a prepackaged bankruptcy.  I believe that they closed Jeffboat in about 2018.  The company now uses the name American Commercial Lnes ( ACL).

The town of Jeffersonville, Indiana is right next to New Albany where there is a riverboat museum.  They might have old Jeffboat tow boat drawings.

Roger

Magnificent Model!!

Who built the Caroline N?

Roger

For the extensive brass fabrication that I am doing for my current project I am using Bakers Fluid.  This is a water thin clear liquid. I apply it with small paint brush.  It apparently has very low surface tension as it flows into tight joints. Solder seems to follow it.

I have also learned to “match the solder to the application.”  I have three diameters of solder- .015in, 1/32in, and 1/8in.  For most work, 1/32in seems ideal.  It does it’s job without dropping a big blob that must be cleaned up later. I will be moving on shortly to 150 or so tiny ring bolts for wooden hatches.  For these, I intend to use the .015in.  There are also some applications where solder is built up and then shaped to build a contour.  For this the 1/8in diameter works well.

Likewise, I have several soldering irons with different tip size.  The idea is to use the smallest tip that will heat the joint. A tip that is too large can deposit a big blob that will require extensive cleanup or can ruin the work.

Roger

The standard arrangement on virtually all Lake Freighters built after 1900 was to locate the anchor handling windlass on the main deck, sometimes called the spar deck.  The forecastle deck was built above the main deck with sides enclosed by the shell plating and the aft end by the forecastle bulkhead.   This means that the anchor windlass and anchor chains would be completely hidden. If I was building this model I would remove the anchor chain pipes from the forecastle deck.

These steam driven windlasses often featured an auxiliary vertical drive shaft that drove a capstan on the forecastle deck.  The capstan was used to handle mooring lines.  This would also involve extending the forecastle bulkhead aft and piercing it for reinforced openings for the mooring cables.  This probably involves more modifications than you want to do.

Roger

In the case where brass has been soldered, good practice dictates removal of flux, splatter, oxidation, etc.  This will require more aggressive cleaning.  Sparex, a proprietary chemical, in a heated water solution chemically cleans this harder to remove contamination.  I found Sparex to be tricky to use.  Forgetting to turn off the crock pot, I was left with a dried out residue.  The slightest contact with ferrous materials leaves everything with a copper plated surface.  It would probably work better for professional jewelers than for modelers’ occasional use.  I therefore, tried simple scrubbing with common household scouring powder on a wet toothbrush followed by rinsing in hot water.  This worked well for me.

Roger

I have used several techniques to clean brass parts.  I keep a jar full of lacquer thinner on my workbench.  I use those little jars with screw lids that restaurants serve jelly in.  Baby food jars with lids would work too.  I dunk very small parts in these jars, screw the lids on and swish the jar around.  I then take the part out with tweezers and put it on a paper towel to dry.

I recently tried cleaning a large part with household scouring powder and hot water. I dipped a wet toothbrush in the scouring powder and scoured the part.  The part was then soaked in hot water.  This worked really well.

I also have a cheap crock pot for heating a solution of Sparex and water.  I have tried this approach but don’t see that it offers any advantages over the above two.

I would prime the part with an auto body primer or better yet a hobby primer.  The Tamiya primers seem to work well. Acrylic paints will adhere to these.

Roger

Was he a hard hat diver?  Round bronze helmet with windows?

Yes, the cruiser that Valeriv is modeling on the scratch build thread was built at the Cramp Yard on the Delaware River.  That doesn’t mean though that the vessel was designed by Cramp.

Roger

Beautiful!  I look forward to seeing your steam driven machine shop operate.

Actual outside temperature here this AM was -2 F.

Roger

Interesting comparison of the two ships. It is my understanding that Mikasa was built in an English shipyard so she reflects British design.  What about Borodin? Did the Russians design their own warships or does she reflect some outside influence, maybe French?

Roger

Welcome to MSW Botha,

During my business career, I made 7 trips to Israel. The company that I worked for built the high pressure steam and feedwater piping for the power station at Askelon.  We also provided some piping for the station at Caesareria. All of this work was engineered and procured by Israel Electric’s Northern Headquarters at Haifa.  Haifa is a beautiful city and my favorite in Israel.

The best advice that I can give is to pick a subject and “make some sawdust.”  Most of us learn best by doing.

Roger

YYour posts showing your processes for building the steam engine and now the lathe are wonderful.  Particularly interesting are the ways that you have been able to machine complex parts from simple geometric shapes.  Bravo Zulu (well done)!

Holding vs Machining-

I have neuropathy in both hands causing a loss of feeling in my fingertips so holding small parts is difficult if not impossible.  Wherever possible, I construct fixtures to hold things.  If I can restrain a part on my workbench top or in a vise then I can file it.  I keep a supply of thin craft plywood in my shop to build these.  The good news is that my Doctor agrees that shop work is good for maintaining what dexterity that I still have.  Some times my brain seems to rewire itself after doing something repetitive for a while.

Roger

I get claustrophobic just looking at it!

This looks like an interesting project.  I am building a Lake Freighter Model too.  See Benjamin Noble in scratch built model posts 1900 and later.

Both this model and tramp would have been of riveted construction.  I suspect that tramp model kit builds one of the Fredrickstad ships built on the Great Lakes as emergency shipping during WW I.  Most were not completed until the early 1920’s.  ANYHOW,  the vertical lines on the hull are intended to represent lapped seams between individual hull plates.

Roger

My daughter grew up in two small cities:  Marietta, Ohio (pop 16000) and Duluth, MN (pop 85000).  Shortly after moving to NYC she mentioned that she was going “upstate” for the weekend. I assumed Syracuse, Rochester, or even Buffalo.  It was  Fishkill.  It didn’t take her long to start acting like she had lived in NYC her whole life.

By the way, Duluth, MN is the southern edge of the real North Country.😆

Roger

Welcome to MSW from the other end of the Great Lakes!  By the way, according to my daughter who lives in Brooklyn 😒, there is no “Central New York,” only “The City” and “Upstate”.  It’s nice to know that another distinctive region exists. 😆

Roger