Roger Pellett

I bought a copy on Amazon yesterday and the illustration says “English Text.”  I’ll post a review when it arrives.

Did these ships have separate fresh water distillers?  Reciprocating steam engine cylinders were lubricated by spraying liquid tallow into the steam.  After passing through the cylinders and condensing the condensate was filtered in an attempt to remove the tallow.  Even so, it would seem that this “fresh water” would be nasty stuff to drink.

At least this is how the steam cycle worked on Great Lakes vessels.  I don’t know the details for these ships.

I prefer the yellow paint job to the red and white shown on the box art.  It looks more businesslike.

The reason that I suggested looking at a tutorial is that most consumer grade bandsaws don’t cut straight.  This requires that your fence must be adjusted to account for the blade’s tendency to wander.  These tutorials will show you how to do this.  You can also use a single point fence that allows you to adjust the lead angle as you feed the board through the saw.  

You might try setting your bandsaw up to rip this.  With a limited quantity of expensive wood, your going to lose at least 1/8in on each pass through your table saw.  There are tutorials on the web on using your bandsaw for ripping.

Many years ago there was a company named AMT that advertised low priced power woodworking tools in Popular Mechanics Magazine.  I don’t remember  prices but they low enough that someone just beginning a career and living in their first purchased home with a mortgage could buy them without feeling guilty.  I bought an eight inch table saw.

Starting with rough cut pear harvested locally and Howard Chapelle drawings I used this saw to build a Hahn Method POF model of the New York Pilot Boat Express ex Anna Maria.  At that time I did not have access to a thickness sander, or a miniature table saw, Byrnes or otherwise.

My my point is that even a full size El Cheapo table saw fitted with the right blades will work.  In my case, I was able to start with rough cut lumber.  Once I had ripped it into rectangular billets, I switched to hollow ground blades to cut strips.  Starting with round logs, without a bandsaw splitting with a wedge works.  If you live in a cold climate there is often someone that has a powered firewood splitter.

Anthony,

If I lived where you do, I’d start visiting orange groves to see if they might let me take logs from trees that they are getting rid of.  I understand that citrus lumber is excellent for our purpose.

Roger

You should use a tight grained hardwood that will withstand shaping and sanding while still maintaining a crisp edge.  Assuming that you are not using Castillo, aka boxwood, and want to limit yourself to readily available commercial materials, a good, straight grained maple would be a good choice.

Basswood, also readily available is a poor choice; too soft and fuzzy.

All of this depends on you having woodworking equipment to rip wood into needed sizes.

I believe that Syren still sells Castillo in sheets.  Check with them.

To add to the discussion.

 I have been using CA glue for assembling the model soldiers that I have been painting.  I use very little on the end of a toothpick or something smaller.  If I use much more, my body tells me so-  A nasty sore throat and blocked sinuses.  If I tried to use it in any quantity I’d have a severe allergic reaction.  To me, whatever limitations PVA glues have are nothing compared to CA.

My house here in Duluth was new in 1990 and built to my specifications.  We have gas forced air heat and air conditioning.  Neverless, we have significant humidity swings.  Very low in winter and higher in summer as Duluth summers do not require AC most of the time.

My models range in age from new to 45 years old, were built with PVA glues and have held up well

Maybe this should be upgraded to the plastic kit ship model area of the forum?  After all it’s a boat, just a flying one.i😆

Was this an army plane?

One last piece of advice in addition, not instead, of the above.

Try to pick a subject that will hold your interest.  Whatever you decide to do this, by today’s way of looking at things, will be a lengthy project.  If in a burst of enthusiasm, and seduced by the box art, you buy something and then lose interest later your kit will join the majority of those never completed.

Roger

“ However, in this hobby of ship modeling I think that anyone who is able to make their own drawings whether CAD or manual, is certainly a few steps ahead of someone who lacks these abilities.”

Well said, Hank!  Without these abilities modelers are limited to modeling a variety of subjects where kits or prepackaged plan sets are not available.

Buy a simple kit, read the instructions, make sawdust and finish the model warts and all.  Experience is the best teacher.

Hank,  

Admiral Rickover used to insist that the “science” of nuclear power was not difficult.  What was Hard was the engineering and that the success of the technology would be determined by the quality of the engineering.  He, therefore, insisted that his plants be easy to operate and to the maximum extent possible maintainable by forces afloat.

These were lessons that the civilian nuclear power industry failed to learn to their peril.

Kearsarge vs Merrimack:  Apples and Oranges.  Merrimack was a large steam frigate; a super frigate like the earlier Constitution intended to outclass all foreign rivals.  Kearsarge was a much smaller steam sloop.

You might want to pick up a copy of the book “Merrimack, the Biography of a Steam Frigate” by Stephen Chapin Kinnaman.  Another valuable reference is Volume I of “The Old Steam Navy” by Donald L. Canney.  A third reference would be an article published within the last 5-10 years in the Nautical Research Journal describing construction of a model of USS Minnesota, another ship of the same class.

Another professional model makers story that I assume has been rendered obsolete by CAD:

Back in the 1960’s as a very junior naval officer assigned to the Naval Reactors Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission (Admiral Rickover’s Engineering Command) I was sent to the Electric Boat Shipyard in Groton CT for a month’s TDY to learn how submarines were built.

There was a section of the yard called “Siberia” that housed full sized wooden mockups (1:1 models) of the reactor compartments and in some cases the engine rooms of all of the classes of nuclear submarines.  An interesting feature of these models was the inclusion of the space to pull out the tube bundles of all heat exchangers and to remove the internals of all valves without requiring removal of nearby equipment.

The worst ship model is one one not built.  I have been attempting to build quality ship models for more years than I care to remember and in the process have built some that were bad beyond belief.  I still have some purchased fittings in my stash that were stripped from the models before they were trashed Over time my skills have gradually improved to the point where I now have a collection of models that I am proud of.

My advice is, decide on what type and period of ship that you would like to build that involves the skills that you would like to develop.  Buy the simplest kit that meets these criteria.  Get busy and build it.  Don’t worry if you make mistakes.  Everyone makes mistakes and remembers them.  Finish the model and move on.  Knowledge and skills will only improve over time by doing.

As part of the CAD-Drafting discussion, the effect on the professional model making world is interesting.  Before CAD, the easiest way to visualize a project in 3-D was to construct a physical model.  This resulted in some amazing work.  The Naval Architecture firm Gibbs and Cox built some remarkable models of Destroyers’ engineering spaces.  The Navy Museum at the Washington Navy Yard used to have on display a large scale model of a World War II LCI showing complete hull structure and interior spaces.  These were intended as serious design documents and construction aids, not office decoration.

When I began my civilian working career, our customers the major architect engineering firms, all had model shops.  In the mid 70’s Bechtel, the largest of these had a contract to build 5 or 6 duplicate nuclear power plants; the SNUPPS project.  They built a large collection of models, the most unusual was a construction model, literally several guys playing in a sandbox with scale model cranes.  At the completion of each phase they would call in the photographers to take pictures.  The idea was to provide contractors with an aid to reduce construction costs.  During one of my visits, they were installing the containment building roof; a very tall model crane dangling an orange peel shaped of plastic in the air.  Sadly, all but two of these plants were cancelled.

I visited another firm who was building a coal gasification plant.  The purpose of the visit was to determine the quantities and sizes of piping required. They had a huge scale model of the plant.  They also had scale tape measures that I have not seen since. Using the model instead of drawings, I was amazed at how quick and easy it was to finish what could have been a tedious job.  This was also my first exposure to miniature model maker power tools, a “Jarmac” disc sander and a miniature table saw of unknown make.

I retired when 3-D CAD was still in its infancy.  I assume that it has since rendered physical models used as engineering tools obsolete.

Roger

Lou,

Minutes ago I finished eating a piece of the fruit cake that I baked.  It uses real dried fruit soaked in rum.  I am a novice baker and it was easy to bake.  Google World’s Best Fruit Cake recipe on the web.

Your choice of books depends on what you want to do.  Are you satisfied with buying kits and assembling them using kit supplied parts?  Do you want to replace some parts with those that you make yourself?  Are you interested in “kit bashing” to produce a more historically accurate model?  Are you interested in scratch building?

Different approaches to modeling require different reference and research materials.

Roger

Richard,

Wood shrinkage and expansion is a major problem in wooden boats.  The best solution is to leave them in the water so that the moisture content in the wood remains constant, but this is not possible for various reasons.   When boats are taken out of the water and the wood dries out the seams open up.  When the boat is relaunched these seams will leak to the point where the boat can sink.  For this reason wooden boats are often hung in slings in the water by the boatyard crane until the seams tighten up.

Over the years, builders of boats that are constantly in and out of the water such as ships boats or recreational watercraft, or lifeboats where time does not permit swelling of the seams, have used innovative construction techniques to overcome this problem.  These include a waterproof membrane between two layers of diagonal planking (Royal Navy Ships Boats), and planking seams backed up with a batten (American mahogany speedboats).  Lapstrake planking (extensively used in wooden lifeboats) also minimizes this problem.

WoodenBoat Magazine always includes a page titled “Save a Classic”  where they try to find new owners to rescue old boats.  They will often warn prospective owners with words to the effect that,  “She has been out of the water for several years and is completely dried out.”

Roger

 Engineering drawings are a means of communicating; a language.  As such there are certain conventions that must be learned, orthogonal views, isometric views, etc.  There are also spatial relationships that must be learned and understood.  Laying out the head rails on a sailing ship is nothing more than learning how to project a “true view.”  It is also necessary to fully understand the mathematical concept of scale.  These skills are independent of the techniques used.

By taking a basic drafting course, these skills can be learned independent of computer jargon, file management, etc.  I also believe that manual drafting is a better way to learn and understand spatial relationships.  

A number of years ago I was appointed to the industry advisory committee for the engineering program at our local branch of the University of Minnesota, known locally and in hockey circles as UMD.  The first question being considered was what CAD program did local employers want their graduates to learn?  I explained that their graduates that we hired could quickly learn our CAD programs in a few days, and that my son who had graduated from Purdue had taken a one semester computer course; Spreadsheet, CAD, Data Base and that had been sufficient when he began his first engineering job.  I also pointed out that many of their graduates would benefit by improving their written communication skills.  Shortly thereafter I was disinvited from attending future meetings.

Roger

At the size that you will need you are going to be working within the cell structure of the wood.  When I tried to use very tight grained wood, boxwood, for making tiny blocks the wood fell apart when I tried to drill and shape them.

If I were going to make these tiny blocks, I might try casting the basic shape in resin or pewter in a rubber mold.  

Roger

Cutty Sark is a composite built ship-  wood planking over iron framing so there is no point to building a POF model so that you can show exposed framing or that as some model kits advertise it’s just like building the real thing.”

To further complicate the picture, I believe that there is archeological evidence of a large English sailing ship that was originally clinker planked.  During a rebuild, the steps on the frames supporting the lapstrake planking were dubbed off and she was carvel planked.  I’m not sure if this fits into the timeframe of the Great Harry but it shows the sort of things that were done.

A number of years before Mary Rose had been investigated one of the noted British miniature model makers built a model of her (Mary Rose) based on the evidence that he could be perfectly sure of-  A slightly choppy sea with two masts and tops sticking out of it!