Roger Pellett

Are you sure that Puritan had a windlass?  These yachts were sailed by large professional crews capable of rigging multipart tackles to lift an anchor. They also had powered tenders to tow them to and from the starting line.  Puritan was designed specifically to defend the cup so had little need to anchor.

Weight in the ends of a racing yacht is bad as it increases pitching. Edward Burgess would have known this and would not have burdened her with unnecessary topside weights.

The Herreshoff Museum and America’s Cup Hall of Fame in Bristol, RI has models of America’s Cup defenders.  Give them a call.

Roger

Billowing sails on Vasa?  An Oxymoron!!  She was incapable of carrying her rig in much more than a deal calm.

Roger

I’d like to suggest a new name. 😆.   My son was 5 or so years old, the Incredible Hulk was a popular TV show.  He had a plastic green Hulk that he ran around the house with.  Somehow he didn’t quite get the name right and called it the “Credible Hulk.”  Now that it’s finished I would call it the Credible Hulc too.

Roger

Dan published an article several years ago in the Nautical Research Journal about developing plans for Queen Anne’s Revenge.  Go to the Guild’s website, use their online index to identify the article and order a reprint from the Guild’s office.

I have also read (somewhere) that the bottoms were often domed so that they would not stand upright on the deck, thereby being useless for anything but their intended purpose.

Joseph,

Looking good!

If you want to read something to keep you interested, I recommend Kenneth Roberts’ historical novel “Rabble in Arms.”  This is specifically about the Revolutionary War on Lake Champlain, ending with the battle of Saratoga.  Roberts was a history professor at Dartmouth.  He is best remembered for his Novel “Northwest Passage,” which was made into a movie starring Spencer Tracy (not the Alfred Hitchcock movie).

Roger

Harold Hahn developed his method in the 1970’s.  At that time there was also a series of articles running in the Nautical Research Journal about harvesting and using native hardwoods.  Hahn used maple for his first models including the Schooners for his shipyard diorama.  Real Boxwood was also available commercially from specialty lumber dealers.

Those of us who got involved in harvesting our own wood found that we could easily cut and mill enough wood for several lifetimes of model building.

I believe that when Hahn first developed his system wood waste was not a concern.  Once he switched to Boxwood, he made the comment about wasting material.

Roger

Volume II of NRG’s Shop Notes, available from their online store, includes an excellent article complete with extensive color chips about old time paint colors. It was written by Eric Ronnberg a careful researcher. Although focused on the Nineteenth Century, the color chips include a number of preindustrial colors such as Red Lead, Red Oxide, Yellow Ochre.  This is one case where it’s better to have a hard copy as you are not looking at colors through a computer monitor.

In my opinion, this one article is worth the prices of the book.

Roger

Hahn’ double sistered regularly spaced frames are a gift from Charles Davis who worked building large wooden vessels during the shipping shortage caused by U Boat losses in WWI.  In his book, The Built Up. Ship Model Davis wrote that “This is how real ships were built.”

Fast Forward 100 years, and the standard has become Fully Framed POF models using exact Admiralty Framing practices, although the authors of books on this subject do not echo Davis’s claim of universality.

Construction of real wooden ships with the Davis/Hahn framing or the more complicated Admiralty framing required full sized patterns copied from full sized lines on a mold loft floor.  The lofting in turn required a digital tabulation of dimensions taken from a scale drawing or half model.

In fact, the picture is much wider.  Thousands of wooden sailing ships were built under primitive conditions by artisans not schooled in preparing Admiralty style draughts.  They relied on shorthand techniques to shape keel, stempost, sternpost, and a few widely spaced frames.  Whole molding was one of these techniques.  Once these few frames had been erected, planking could begin.  Filler frames would be added along with planking.  Sometimes segments of these filler frames would only be fastened to the planking, not to the keel or to adjoining frame segments.  See Charles W. Morgan 1845 or Lake Champlain 1758 British Sloop Boscowan.  I personally doubt if the framing of Colonial Schooners looked anything like Hahn’s models.

Colonial shipwrights could frame up a hull in remarkably little time.  Arnold’s 1776 Lake Champlain Row Galleys were each built in less than a month’s time, almost certainly from molds brought North by shipwrights who had built similar craft to defend the Eastern Seaboard.  There was no time for careful lofting.  Despite this, the plans commissioned and sold by the NRG for the 1776 Row Galley Washington show regularly spaced double sistered Davis/Hahn frames.  Some things don’t change.

Building the model right side up or Hahn Style upside down does not prevent the builder from realistic framing practices.

Roger

A very nice job!

I looked on the kit box and on your previous posts and could not find the date, the real thing, not the model.  I assume WWII?

Roger

I’m not sure that Lees’ otherwise excellent book would be applicable in this case as the  book emphasizes rigging of larger vessels.  These sloops with their heavily raked single masts often had topsails with exaggerated roaches to clear the forestay.

Titanic lifeboat Kit:

It’s not just the materials.  Lapstrake planking is a bit of an art form since the plank edges will be there for the life of the model for all to see.  Furthermore, where the plank runs into the stem and sternposts it is necessary to cut an overlapping groove called a “gain” into the plank to allow it to fit smoothly into the post.  As I recall, the instructions did not call for this leaving the guy trying to build the model with a mess.

For mass marketed commercial model kits you are stuck using the materials that they choose to provide.

Roger

Thanks, for reminding me of this Andy.  I was part of a student team to design a tanker with a hinge amidships.  The idea was to produce a vessel with draft shallow enough to pass through the Suez Canal.  The hinge reduced stresses in the shallow hull.  We built and towed an 8ft long model of the proposed design.

My job was to design the ship’s machinery and I used a large slow speed Sulzer engine.  The American Nordberg engine company offered a prize for designs using a Diesel engine.  I designed a heat recovery system that used engine exhaust to generate steam to power the ship’s generating sets.

You are blasting through construction of this model with lightening speed, Kevin and doing a beautiful job.  I hope that you build the entire ship.

Roger

Kevin,

It’s coming along nicely.  

I believe that the term Shelter Deck was originally chosen to maintain the fiction that the deck was only sheltered from the weather, not watertight.

You mention a feedwater tank so this must have been a Steamship.  This is somewhat surprising because by the 1860’s the large slow speed direct drive diesels were favored by many owners and of course Sunderland was home to Doxford, an early proponent of diesel propulsion.  Americans were, and still are, one of the few holdouts.  They continued to build steamships and when they switched to diesel, it was the medium speed engine with reduction gears and/or CP propeller.

Marine Engineering is Naval Architecture’s less glamorous sibling, particularly in the diesel era as unlike steam plants, the engines are designed by mechanical engineers working for the engine builders.  Reading news from my alma mater, I sense that the discipline is coming back into the light of day as shipping lines look for ways to reduce emissions from burning the heavy bunker oils.

Roger

The museum in Erie, Pennsylvania that operates the replica of the 1812 Brig Niagara has also conducted live fire tests of muzzleloading shipboard guns.  The targets were realistic shipboard structures.  The original Niagara fought in the 1813 battle of Lake Erie and was armed with Carronades.

Roger

The book is:

SS Great Britain, The Ship Model

by William Mowll

There is a British Author who 10-20 years ago white a book about building a model of the Great Britain.  I never actually put my hands on the book but I did have another book that he wrote about HMS Thunderer.  Some detective work is required.

I only build ship models from scratch, but do faithfully read other’s experiences on the forum.  Remember, this advice is worth exactly what you paid for it!

We are constantly asked by novice builders to help them to salvage projects that have gone awry.  In a remarkable number of these, the kits are poorly engineered, the materials are of very poor quality, or both.  In many cases, builders are expected to defy the laws of nature to achieve results.  In the end, the builder decides that he or she can never develop the skill required and the project is abandoned.

Please, pick a well engineered kit built from quality materials!  Small open boats like you want to build can be difficult for beginners as their “scantlings” (structural members) are small.  Model Shipways, for example, offers a high quality longboat kit but it is 1:48 scale.  While this is the “museum scale” for ship models,  applied to this small boat it produces a tiny model.

The Medway Longboat Kit mentioned by Allan above is engineered by the same designer as the Model Shipways Longboat Kit.  It uses quality materials and at 1:24 it’s scale is twice that of the other Longboat Kit.  There is also a dedicated group build on the forum that you can join.

Re:  Lifeboat kits:  I assume that you are referring to a Titanic Lifeboat Kit.  Avoid like the plague!  This kit requires materials of dubious quality to be lapstrake planked.  There was a recent thread by someone trying to plank this poorly engineered kit.

Roger

If the Wood Glue was the usual, yellow Elmer’s, Titebond, etc. Poly Vinyl Adhesive type Glue, the recommended solvent is alcohol.  I personally have had good luck using alcohol sold as camp stove fuel.  This is not diluted with water.

If you used something else, tell us what it was.

Roger

To the best of my knowledge nothing that could be considered to be design information exists for Sixteenth Century English Ships Boats.

The Anthony Roll drawn in the mid 1500’s shows a double ended lapstrake boat being towed behind each vessel illustrated.  In the 1500’s large ships boats were towed, not carried aboard.

No small boat has of yet been recovered from the wreck site of the Mary Rose.  

Two boats were recovered from the wreckage of the 1577 Spanish whaling ship San Juan; a whaleboat, and a Barco, a larger boat more closely resembling a Longboat.  Plans for the whaleboat have been published.  None for the Barco.  Google: Red Bay Galleon.

Assuming that you’re trying to build an accurate model, best to skip the small boat.

Roger

According to Wikipedia, the three Yellowstone’s that I mentioned are the last three in existence anywhere.  The Lake Superior Railroad Museum has restored at least two steam locomotives in their collection to operating status.  This included re tubing boilers.  They have a shop on site and at Cloquet, MN 15 miles away.

The Big Boy visited us here in Duluth.  It must have been preCovid; 2019.  Unfortunately I missed her.

The DM&IR operated two types of Mallet locomotives. About 1910 they began to operate 2-8-8-2 engines.  In the 1930’s they increased the power of these engines by conversation from compound to simple expansion.  In 1941 they began to take delivery of more powerful 2-8-8-4 “Yellowstone” Mallets that they ran into the 1960’s.

Duluth is located along an ancient volcanic ridge sloping down to Lake Superior.  Trains negotiate a 3% grade down to the ore docks.  Difference in elevation is about 600ft.  Locomotive power was supposedly based on the number of empty ore cars that could be pulled back up the grade. The big Yellowstone engines could pull 55 empty cars.  Once they gained experience with the engines they decided to use them for main line pulling power as well.

There is apparently some debate regarding the “largest” steam locomotive; Big Boy vs Yellowstone.  Three Yellowstone engines still exist, all in the Duluth Area.  Two are outdoors at Two Harbors and Proctor, MN.  The third is in the Lake Superior Railroad Museum in the old Duluth Depot.  This engine is displayed 6 inches or so above the floor with the wheels revolving slowly and all linkages moving; an impressive sight.  The museum is well worth anyone’s visit with a great collection of equipment well conserved by a great team of ex DM&IR volunteers.  Avoid an August visit when Thomas the Tank Engine is in Town!

Andy’s suggestion offers a more interesting but still compact layout.  My idea is still evolving, but back to my Benjamin Noble Model.

Roger

Whoever rigged the model did a sloppy job on the ratlines (the rope ladders on the masts). Best to redo.

Rigging a three masted square rigged ship is a project in and of itself.  The photos that you have posted indicate that whoever built the model did a decent job building the hull.

I would, therefore, suggest that you strip the model down to the hull.  Carefully save masts, yards, blocks, deadeyes, etc.  Do not remove any of these items securely attached to the hull.  Clean the hull, saliva and Qtips, repair any damage and rerig.  You will need new rigging line.

You will also need a good reference.  Longridge’s The Anatomy of Nelson’s Ships has some good isometric drawings of rigging.

Roger

This project is also related to my ship modeling interest- Great Lakes Shipping.  The Duluth, Mesabe, & Iron Range Railroad used these massive engines to pull trains of 100-200 24 ft iron ore cars locally called Jennys from the mines to the ore docks in Duluth and Two Harbors, MN.  Each car carried 50-70 tons of ore.  So it took 2 to 3 trains to load a 600ft ore carrier.

The huge gravity ore docks in the harbor are still active, although the large 1000ft ore carriers can carry up to 6 trainloads of refined taconite pellets.  The Railroad and the former US Steel Steamship Fleet is now a part of the Canadian National Railroad.

I have 10 iron ore cars painted in DM &IR colors and logos.  I have a caboose that needs to be repainted and logos added.  I have found decals for the caboose, but not for the engine tender. 

The engine, ore cars and caboose will be about 5 feet long.  I intend to run a shelf with track about 9 ft long along a wall of my man cave.  The “layout” for the time being will only allow movement of about one train length.  

Roger