Roger Pellett

The Byrnes saw, is a professional quality machine. If you decide to buy one, I suggest that you discuss spindle sizes with him. Mine came fitted to use a blade with a 1/2in arbor hole. Living in Europe, you will want to be able to buy replacement blades locally that will have metric sized arbor holes. If he does not automatically fit his saws sent to Europe to accept metric sized blades you should ask him to make you an adaptor. This is easy and inexpensive for him to do.

I have recently been studying Seventeenth Century (1600’s) ship design techniques. Those guys developed interesting methods for graphically plotting the large radius circles and the ellipses necessary to draw the hull forms of this time. All were based on first drawing a smaller diameter circle and “stretching it out.”

As Jaager points out, commercial veneer is rotary cut. The miniature model maker Lloyd McCaferty wrote in one of his books that these veneers were unsuitable for his use as the veneer manufacturing process produced many tiny cracks radiating from the cut surface that caused failure when cut into the small pieces that he required.

Harvey, Paint does that. It makes us ship model builders humble! Roger

Your description of the falling weight test tank setup are interesting. Thanks for posting them. I believe that results from these these tests were useful because with the thin waterline shapes used, they were actually measuring frictional resistance that is a linear function of area. Furthermore, at the slow speeds involved for merchant vessels of the times wave making resistance was much less of a factor. These falling weight test tanks were used here in the USA well into the 1900’s by several of the smaller institutions. The two large tanks in the US are the 400+ft tank at the University of Michigan and the 1300? Ft David Taylor Model Basin at Carderock, MD. The model testing facility in the Netherlands is highly regarded. Roger

As far as I am concerned, Michael’s model is timeless.

Henry, I don’t know if your book is supposed to portray actual practice but it clearly shows the butt end of the bowsprit fastened to the pinrail just forward of the windlass. It is mounted in a pair of trunnions to allow it to be pivoted up to clear obstacles in close quarters.

Michael, Your upcoming decision about the boat’s cook stove jogged me to check out L. Francis Herreshoff’s opinion on the subject. When it came to cruising sailboats he had an opinion about everything and he argued that simple is better. He even refused to include toilets on dome of his designs arguing that a good cedar bucket was sufficient. In fact on one of his designs, he located the cedar bucket with a guy sitting on it. Anyhow, I dug out my copy of The Writings of L. Francis Herreshoff and sure enough there is a chapter discussing the cabin plan for a small cruising sailboat. He recommends the Wilcox Crittenden’s Sea Cook Jr. stove. They also made a two burner Sea Cook stove. If you Google Sea Cook Stove, you’ll find a lot of pictures of these. They ran on pressurized alcohol. Roger

Tank test results were either meaningless or misleading until Froude figured out in the 1870’s that frictional and wave making resistance acted differently in determining the resistance of a floating object moving through a fluid. Once he understood this he was able to develop the tank testing procedures used to this day where frictional and wave making resistance are separated for the model and then scaled up differently before being added back together for the full sized ship. Stability calculations are based in integral calculus a subject probably not understood by most practical shipbuilders. Even with electric- mechanical calculators (1960’s era) the calculations were tedious. The calculation also requires knowledge of the vessel’s displacement and although shipbuilders in the 1600’s knew how to approximate the submerged volume of a ship’s hull, estimating the weight in various loaded conditions and accounting of the weights that went into building a ship was difficult. Computers of course have revolutionized ship design with the ability to produce full hydrostatic calculations directly from a CAD generated lines drawing. Roger

Prior to the Late Nineteenth Century there was no useful theoretical body of knowledge regarding hydrodynamic performance of ships. Even after that (up to the 1970’s) it was empirical; make a model, tow it in a tank and see how it performed. Ship and boat boat designers worked largely by intuition and experience. There was, therefore, no reason for shipbuilders, Dutch or otherwise to worry about whether there was a chine at the vessel’s bilge. They were concerned with structural integrity, seaworthiness, tonnage requirements, and as always, ease and cost of construction. The hull forms developed by the Seventeenth Dutch shipbuilders also provided some Naval Architecture advantages. The more or less rectangular midship sections would have provided excellent initial stability, would have maximized usable hull volume relative to tonnage accessed by various authorities and the chine possibly reduced rolling by acting like the much later developed bilge keel. All of this allowed Dutch shipbuilders to provide low cost, efficient, tonnage to support the Nation’s commercial expansion. It also allowed them to expand their fleet faster than their enemies in wartime. Roger

Does Chuck still wood sheets?

A number of years ago I bought a Mincraft miniature pistol grip power drill. It runs off a mincraft power supply similar to the one sold by Proxxon. Since then I have bought a Proxxon pen sander and a Proxxon rotary engraver. Instead of buying a Proxxon power supply I found an adapter; just a short piece of cord that the Proxxon tool plugs into. The other end has the correct plug to connect to the Mincraft power supply. The Proxxon tools run fine with this setup. Roger

Several years ago I toyed with the idea of buying a. Foredom knockoff; MicroMark, Harbor Freight, etc. After all what could be difficult, all it has to do is spin. Then I started to read reviews. It seems that users of the knockoffs had problems with the flexible shafts seizing up. As a. Result, no Foredom, no knockoff.

Henry, i’m not sure exactly what your question is but on a real vessel the two metal straps would not adequately support the bowsprit. A more logical arrangement would be for the butt of the bowsprit to be secured to the knight head structure just forward of the windlass or through the deck planking to one of the deck beams via an iron strap. The bowsprit would pass by the side of the stem, further secured by another iron strap as shown on the museum model pictured above. This second iron strap should be secured to the stem, not the much weaker head structure as it presently is on your model. Roger

Not to wish anybody bad luck, BUT: two times when I have visited the Emergency Room, a table saw accident for me (I still have all 10 fingers) and once when my wife cut her finger, the doctor asked if I was a fly fisherman. When I responded that I built ship models he gave me the tweezers and forceps that he had used. He said, “we just throw them out.”

Ok, tracked it down. These appear to be made (or sold) by The Carving Glove Guy in Saline, Michigan. He calls them Dockyard. The dull red handles are cherry. They are stamped Made in USA in large letters. Roger

Kurt, I can’t tell. The two postings that I looked at were different. The first said that they were located in Rochester, MN. These tools had dull red handles. The other was located in Florida and showed the Traditional packaging with the note, “Appearance may vary.” The blurb claimed that Dockyard chisels are being made again in the USA. Roger

On a whim I looked up Dockyard Carving tools on EBay and was surprised to find new tools marked “Made in USA” offered for sale. The guy selling them claims “Dockyard Carving Tools are back!” Does anybody know anything about this? Has anybody used these? Roger

Bob, The blades that I am describing look like but are not plywood blades. They are larger versions of the Thurston blades used with the Byrnes saw but slightly hollow ground. As far as I know, they were a proprietary Sears product. When sharp they do produce a beautiful satin finish. I met Harold Hahn on a couple of occasions, the first in 1975 at the NRG Conference held in the very small (pop 15000) Ohio River Town of Marietta, Ohio where my wife and I were living at the time. I read about the upcoming conference in our local newspaper and was surprised to learn that there was an organization devoted to maritime research and ship modeling. The attendees were a roster of whose who in the ship modeling world. I immediately joined up and this past year received my 45 year bar to go with my pin. In those days you could buy 1 inch (3/4 inch actual) thick planks of true boxwood, I still have two waiting for a project, and I believe that Hahn started with full thickness lumber to build his models. The problem with getting the blades sharpened is not the cost but getting the sharpener to not set the teeth! At least one of the blades is supposedly new. Roger

At present there are several Sears Craftsman “Satin Thin Rip Veneer” blades for sale on EBay. Harold Hahn used these blades to saw all of the wood for his 1:96 and 1:48 scale POF models. This was before the Preac and Byrnes miniature table saws were available. Based on his experience I bought a couple of these blades and used them to saw boxwood and pear for a POF model that I built. They worked fine. I don’t understand the need for a tilting arbor or tilting table if the saw is to be limited to model shipbuilding. 90 percent of the sawing that I do is ripping and the rest crosscutting.

Here’s an example of a serving machine that I built several years ago. The gears are invisible as they are sandwiched between the two MDF end pieces on each side. I used gears picked up as samples at a trade scow many years ago but whole bags of plastic gears are available cheaply on Amazon. I played with a way to hold the thread spool but when I actually used it I found that it worked better just to hold it in my hand. The only things that I had to buy were the two alligator clips so the whole project cost less than $3.00 US. Roger

Anyone who has ever attempted to untie a knot in a wet rope under load will appreciate the brilliance of the belaying pin. This simple invention allows the hitch securing the line to be released while the rest of the line remains under tension. The belaying pin pin also solves the problem of securing the bight of the line. Tying knots usually requires the end. So, how did seamen secure lines prior to the invention of the belaying pin. I realize that ancient ships had stag horns for this purpose., but it would seem that space would not permit the dozens of these required to secure the lines leading to the deck for a complicated rig. Thoughts? Roger

Charles Davis got his experience working as a draftsman in the WW I shipyards building wooden ships for the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. In 1917 American shipyards built large wooden ships with regularly spaced sistered frames (two layers of timber with segments butted together and joints staggered). This reflected how large wooden Schooners had been recently built. When he got interested in ship model building he published The Built Up Ship Model purporting to be a guide to building the Revolutionary War brig Lexington “using methods just like those for building real ships”. Never mind that the plans that he provided are for a brig built for the Royal Navy years after Lexington sailed, and Revolutionary War era shipbuilding practices were not the same as those used in 1917. His book was apparently widely read and Harold Hahn used Davis’ regularly spaced double sistered frames when he built his beautiful colonial shipyard diorama in the mid 1970’s. He adapted Davis’ writings to include his “upside down” method as a means to ensure proper alignment of frames. His method per se does not prevent varying framing to more closely represent actual practice. In fact, for his model of the 74 Alfred he included two different sided frame dimensions - heavy bents, and thinner fillers in between. I personally like Hahn’s upside down method, as it provides a foolproof system for accurately aligning frames. Roger

According to the NRJ index, the model that I remembered was of Pauline and the article was in Issue-39, pages 215- 223. Roger

Nice work Ian. These steel hulled sailing ships make handsome models. If I can make a suggestion, I don’t believe that any seaman would leave the bars in the capstan when not being used.