Roger Pellett

Nobody building a ship model duplicates the exact same materials used to build the actual ship. We substitute brass for wrought iron and we substitute different species of wood. In that sense, we all cheat. On the other hand, many kit manufacturers do not use high quality or even appropriate materials in their kits. So, if your substitution produces a better model, go for it. Serious, model builders scratch building unique models are usually concerned about longevity. The standards that Jaager references above limit materials to those that will provide long lifetimes for models meeting their requirements. This is of particular concern if your model will be sold to others. Roger

Jaager, I certainly agree that close is good enough. Especially in the day when painters mixed their own paints. Eric also makes the point that these oxide paints were especially subject to variation because the natural pigments varied. I have never tried to use a color wheel. For my last model, I mixed artist’s acrylic pigments by eye. Bob, My reason for posting this was to encourage more modelers to push their limits a little; away from premixed paints. This is an alternative. I have found that quality artist acrylics in tubes mix up and spray well. For my last model, though, I bought a huge tube of yellow ochre at WallMart for something less than $5. The grains of pigment could have been used for aggregate to pave your driveway. Actually, I found an unopened bottle of Floquil SantaFe orange in my stash. I think a slight red tint and Eric Ronnberg’s system of adding grey to mute the intensity should do the trick. Roger

I have been thinking ahead to painting my Benjamin Noble Lake Freighter Model. She was launched in 1909 and I want to accurately duplicate the industrial colors used back then, among which is the red lead paint commonly used as bottom paint on the Lakes. My first stop was Eric Ronnberg’s great article from the Nautical Research Journal about Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century paint colors. This article used to be included in the Resource section of the Guild’s Web Site. For reasons utterly beyond me it is no longer there. Fortunately it can be found in Volume 2 of the Guild’s Shop Notes. In addition to including color chips, the article discusses muting colors for different modeling scales. The article, however, does not include formulae for mixing the colors represented by the paint chips, but after rereading the article I discovered that each paint chip is identified by two codes. Each code representing a different color standard, one of which is the Munsell standard. Each Munsell code represents a different unique paint color. This means that if you know the Munsell number for a particular color, someone should know how to mix it. So, I typed in the Munsell number that Eric provided for his red lead color chip into my Internet search engine, and sure enough, up popped several sites for red lead color. At least one, was a company that offered to duplicate it (lead free.) The service is not cheap. There is a $25.00 fixed charge plus the cost of the paint. Another possibility would be to see if commercial paint retailers can match Munsell Numbers. Some of the lacquer based auto body paints might be suitable. Roger

Testor’s Dulcote. Although sold as a flat clear overcoat, I find that this adds a depth to finishes. The effect is not a shine. But a slight glow.

Brian, Civil War Navy Ships Boats usually had a “wash strake” fitted above the regular planking. The wash strakes were pierced with openings that served as rowlocks for the oars. This construction is shown on two of the pictures that you have posted. To be exact, the rowlocks were often “composition” metal; the term then used for brass or bronze, castings. These castings were grooved and segments of the wash strake fitted into the grooves. Roger

Beautiful work, Allan. There seems to be enough variety in the original Dockyard style models that yours can be finished when you say it is. Roger

Good to see someone else from Minnesota joining up. Roger

Industrial metal fabricators have long been faced with the problem of painting metal with a durable coating. Industrial painting specifications invariably require using a solvent to remove grease, oil, etc. This is followed by abrasive blast cleaning with sand or if possible metal grit. Most specifications then require prime coating within the same 8 hour shift. So what does this have to do with the question at hand? The principals are the same. First, go over the surface with a file to get rid of solder, scale, etc. A file or sandpaper will also give the surface what is known as “tooth.” Coatings do not stick to polished surfaces. Thoroughly clean the surface. An aggressive solvent is necessary. I use a little lacquer thinner in a tuna fish can. Handle the part with tweezers. Oil from your skin will inhibit bonding. Blacken or paint immediately. An invisible oxide film can form overnight. These small parts will usually be handled after coating. To avoid damage, I seal the coating by spraying the part with a matt lacquer. Dulcote or similar. Roger

My objective when I build a model is to make everything myself except cordage and chain. I have seven scratch built models and one in process. So far I have met my objective. Foe me figuring out how how to make something new is half the fun. Roger

Thanks, Mark Bob: Here on the Lakes, the colors of vessels’ hulls reflect the cargos that they are expected to carry; Red oxide, iron ore; Black, coal; and light grey, limestone or cement. A few fleets sported fancy paint jobs; Shenango Furnace painted their hulls green and ships In the Inland Steel Fleet still have a red oxide hull with a white stripe. Crews supposedly hate the paint job since they have to maintain it. Since, draft can vary greatly depending on loaded condition and since fouling is not a huge problem, the paint job does not mark a load waterline. Instead the hull color is carried down to the strake of plating just above the bilge strake. Below that, the hull is painted with whatever primer was used. In days past this was an orange hued red lead. Color photos from 50 or so years ago sometimes show this, and often show the red lead primer where lock walls, docks, etc. have rubbed off the paint. When Ships fit out after winter layup, crews standing on the harbor ice with very long handled paint rollers touch up the paint. These ships are usually drydocked every five years. At that time the bottoms are sandblasted and repainted. With current regulations preventing lead based paints, I would assume that bottoms are now painted with ordinary red iron oxide primer. Roger

Both of these should be Pinned by the forum gurus. They look like great reference tools. One color that I have not been able to find anywhere is red lead, not the actual stuff. This is an old time industrial color widely used as a primer. It appears to have been used for painting the bottom of Great Lakes Ships. Any ideas?

Eberhard, Your paint job looks good to me! It’s good to se you making progress again. Roger

A somewhat cynical view of finishes: Kits are expensive: You are paying for someone else's intellectual property, which you should, but you are also paying a lot for marketing, and distribution. Each organization between you and the manufacturer needs to be paid. To offset these marketing and distribution costs, many "Hobby Shop Grade Kits" do not use high grade materials, and many use misleading descriptions to promote sales. For example, genuine American Black Walnut is an excellent wood for high end furniture, but not so good for ship models, and the stuff marketed as walnut by some kit manufacturers is worse. Trying to find a finish to enhance the appearance of low quality wood is a waste of time. Although there are finishes advertised to turn any wood into a work of art, these are aimed at the DIY and Craft markets. Many of these contain fillers intended to hide defects, thereby covering up detail that we want to show. So, realizing that not everyone has unlimited resources to devote to this hobby what are the alternatives. Deal directly with a kit manufacture with a reputation for furnishing high quality materials: By buying directly from the manufacture your money goes into the kit. You are not paying for distribution. Links to these quality kit manufacturers can be found here on MSW. Use a finish appropriate to the quality of the materials: As they say "paint covers a multitude of sins." Build from scratch: Today, information that can be used to build accurate ship models is widely available. An hour's search on the internet will turn up dozens of public domain examples of prototypes suitable for all skill levels. Howard Chapelle's work alone could keep an army of model builders busy for a lifetime. Prints of his work are available from the Smithsonian at a reasonable cost (I think comparable to a couple of Starbucks Lattes). With your prints in hand, go to the lumberyard and hardware store. Buy a couple of chisels, coping saw, a quality pine board and carve a hull. Buy other tools as needed. Back in the 1930's, Popular Mechanics published articles on building ship models using just this solid hull modeling technique. I have two such models built by my father that are between 75 and 85 years old that look like they were built yesterday. Roger

With so few frames, you will have a difficult time producing an accurately shaped hull. You will make your life a lot easier if you fill in the spaces between the frames with wooden blocking, then carve them to produce a smooth hull. You can then plank over this firm substructure. Roger

I hope that the skiff is going to be restored. Although my sea time was very limited; An 8 week Midshipman Cruise, it was on a small ship, a minesweeper deployed in Japanese coastal waters. Few people realize how important these small boats were to the life of the crews on these small ships. They were our communication to the outside world- movies, mail, etc.

knots were used to secure little if any running rigging aboard ship. Have you ever tried to untie a knot in a piece of wet rope, particularly on a dark night when it is under load? Cleats, bollards, bits, and belaying pins were all invented to allow lines to be snubbed or cast off off under load. This is a case where friction is our friend. Likewise knots were not used to strop blocks. Tying a line around a tiny block is like trying to tie one around a watermelon seed. No wonder that you resorted to CA ☠️ to hold the block in place. Before the development of internally stropped blocks in the second half of the Nineteenth Century blocks were stropped with an endless rope grommet, think of a rope donut. These are not difficult to make. The strop would be seized to the block which also produced an eye that could be lashed to wherever it was needed. My system for producing these strops comes from Longridge, The Anatomy of Nelson’s Ships. I’ll be happy to post the details when I have some time if you’re. Interested. Roger

I believe that most successful and experienced model ship builders have a mental picture of what they want their model to look like before they start building it. Very much like an artist with a painting. Finishing decisions are, therefore, made early in the game. Since the introduction of the European style POB models to the American market in the 1970’s there seems to be a desire by neophyte modelers to finish their work bright (with a clear finish) to show their workmanship. While a properly applied bright finish enhances the appearance of Dockyard style models, IMHO this finishing treatment benefits few of these kit models. Most end up looking like toys. The vast majority of ships were working craft whose owners did not wish to spend money on elaborate finishes. Paint was the order of the day. Even navy ships with their large crews to keep busy were by the Nelson era, painted, To me, therefore, obsessing about a bright finish for the average kit model is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig. Wipe on poly, shellac, Dulcote, why argue? Git Er Done! Roger

Brian, Wonderful work! They’re not (wince) lifeboats! They are ships boats. The idea of “help, we’re sinking, man the lifeboats” is a merchant marine rather than a navy idea. Warships boats were specialized working craft, from heavily built launches to fancy fine lines officer’s gigs and barges. Photos of these Civil War gunboats show these boats, some clearly. There is an especially well known Brady photograph of soldiers in a ship’s boat in the James River. While I have never seen a boat establishment for these gunboats, I believe that they were equipped with cutters with perhaps a small launch. See Chapelle’s American Sailing Navy for drawings. If the gunboat was sinking and if there was time to launch one of these heavy craft or if in sinking one floated free, self preservation would cause these boats to be used to save lives but that was not their principal reason for being carried. Roger

A wonderful job Rik! I hope that you get to run it, at least on compressed air. Many many years ago when I was in engineering school, our thermodynamics class went on a field trip to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn Michigan, about 25 miles from Ann Arbor where the University of Michigan is located. At that time, the museum had a large collection of steam engines ranging from a Newcomen Atmospheric engine to a relatively recent steam turbine. The most spectacular was a very large Corliss stationary mill engine, c1880. The flywheel was probably 30ft in diameter and 4 ft wide, the bottom half was of course in a pit in the floor. Our guide, a retired mechanical engineer asked if we’d like to see it run. It turns out that it was hooked up to compressed air. By manually manipulating the valves he singlehandedly got this huge engine running. It was beautifully balanced and very quiet. Quite impressive. Roger

You ‘re building a model of an open boat. Any sort of wipe on finish and to some extent brush on finishes require access to the surface to be finished (obviously!). I don’t see how you can apply any kind of wipe on finish to the boat’s interior without either damaging it or leaving unsightly globs on inaccessible surfaces. If you want an alternative to my Dulcote, I would suggest a thin coating of shellac. Roger

I’m guilty of belonging to the Larry the Cable Guy school of model building, “git er done.” Buy a can of spray matt finish clear. Testor’s Dulcote is my favorite. Shake well, spray a light coat or two on your model and you’re done. Roger

If your work involves metal, here are two things that I consider to be essential; a scriber and Dykem Layout blue. Layout blue is painted on a metal surface and layout lines are scribed thru the blued surface. I’ve tried other things; magic markers, rattle can paint, but nothing comes close to working as well. I bought a can on Amazon.

Here are the tools that I would consider to be the minimum necessary for measuring and marking out: Some comments- Architect’s scale: This is marked off in different scales as explained above. I build my models in feet and inches but I assume something is similar for metric modelers. While these are not expensive, get one that is easy to read. Unfortunately since there 10 different scales, it is easy to make a mistake by measuring something with the wrong scale. A spring clip on the scale at least makes you Lay it down correctly. Metal Ruler: My Engineering school drafting instructor stressed that Architect’s scales were not straightedges; hence the metal ruler- Target, $1.00 Square: I have a couple of Machinists scales like Allan mentioned but if I could only have one square, I like the sliding beam square shown. In addition to working as a square, it also works as a marking gage. Dividers: Get a pair with the bow spring and screw adjustment. The others with just the friction joint never hold the measurement. Technical lead holder and pointer. After seeing others use these, I dug out my old one from Engineering drafting class and bought a pointer for $10 on EBay. I use 4H lead. I will never go back to a wooden pencil. Although I have a digital caliper, I don’t consider it to be essential. I try use scale. Measurements, either directly from my Architects scale or using the dividers to transfer measurements from the scale to the work. I use the caliper mostly for measuring drill bit diameters and checking thicknesses of stock. These tools reflect my personal work habits. I have tried ideas that others use but didn’t work out for me. You will develop your own preferences too. Roger

The model that I am currently building features a lot of soldered brass. This requires a lot of cleaning up after soldering. For this I use a set of cheap no name needle files. My good files I use for material that has not been soldered.

Square riggers were built for one thing; to sail efficiently down wind or at least with the wind over the quarter. When not able to do this, the rig had major disadvantages. They did not “point” well when sailing into the wind, tacking is complicated; without a highly skilled crew the ship would often fail to pass through the eye of the wind, and as posted above they required large highly skilled crews. Of course, before hunting whales, the ship’s first had to get to where they were likely to find them. In the mid Nineteenth Century this required very long voyages from North America or Europe to the Pacific. By this time, the new science of oceanography had mapped prevailing winds and currents so that whaling ship masters could make these voyages traveling mostly “downhill.” The square rig worked well for these long voyages and when they got to the whaling grounds they could take advantage of another square rig feature: The ability to stop the ship when pursuing, killing and butchering whales. This involved backing some sails and filling others. Schooners were far easier to maneuver than square riggers and were better adapted to dealing with contrary winds because of their ability to sail closer to the wind and to tack easily. They also required much smaller crews. These factors explain their near universal adoption for trades in confined or coastal waters. It is interesting to note that the great multimasted schooners built at the end of the age of sail performed well in coastal trades but not so well on Trans Atlantic voyages. So, the question is, Was Kate Corey originally built to hunt whales close to home, early whaling grounds were often in Arctic Atlantic waters, or was her Schooner rig just a mistake by her owners? Roger