Roger Pellett

Great to see you back in the workshop again Keith. Roger

Evan, Glad you’re enjoying the book. Jack Woodward taught Marine Engineering courses at the University of Michigan when I was a student there. As Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering was a very small Department in a large University we came to know our professors personally and he was a great teacher. After Retiring, I wrote a monograph analyzing the 1896 era steam propulsion plant of the SS Meteor, the last of 44 Whaleback type ships once built in the Duluth MN, Superior, WI harbor. Woodward generously agreed to review the monograph for me before it was published by Superior Public Museums, the museum ship’s manager. I have never met Garzke but I did write a review of the book for the Nautical Research Journal and corresponded with him via email regarding rivet strength. He concluded that the ship was just traveling too fast for the conditions. If you or your daughter would like a copy of his email to me send me a PM. Roger

I’m used to the Real Rogers Drill bitts and still have my Rogers stand. The replacement drills on order are Chicago Latrobe, supposed to be made in the USA. We’ll see. Roger

I like to drill with conventional HSS Drill bitts. I use my Sherline Lathe fitted with a milling column and sensitive drilling attachment. This allows me to clamp the object being drilled in a vise secured to the lathe cross slide to accurately position the drill bit over the center punched mark. I do not have the touch for using carbide drill bitts. They usually shatter on the first hole. My current project involves cross drilling a .020” hole through a 1/16” brass tube. I need 48 of these tiny pieces. I decided to drill them as a row of holes along the tube, the individual pieces to be cut apart later. I filed a flat on the top of the tube and center punched each hole location. I had bought a brand new set 61-80 Gyros Brand wire sized drills from Amazon. I chucked the correct sized drill bitt and started drilling. Each of the first 8 holes took forever even with considerable pressure on the drill. Different lubricants and drill speeds made no difference. Frustrated, I rummaged around my tool supplies and found a similar sized no-named drill bitt bought long ago. It drilled through each hole like it was butter. The Gyros drills heavily promoted by Amazon are Chinese Imports. I just ordered a set of Made in USA replacements. Roger

The (relatively) recent exploration of Titanic’s wreckage has focused attention on the riveting of her hull and riveting technology in general. Even after steel became standard for construction, wrought iron rivets continued to be used with steel ones limited to high strength applications. Wrought iron rivets could be driven by hand while steel ones required mechanized equipment. Some British yards with centralized hydraulic plants preferred massive hydraulic riveters while others, especially US Great Lakes yards used compact pneumatic riveters. This also influenced selection of rivet materials. A (to me) subject much more complex than it often appears. Roger

I am perhaps an outlier in this discussion. I have both a Byrnes Saw and a 10in Table Saw. I also have plenty of space including a separate room that houses my table saw. My wife also keeps her distance from my workshop and it’s activities so has no understanding of the dust that is produced.😀 Scratch building without having to resort to purchased “hobby shop” woods, I could work without the Byrnes Saw, but not the other way around. In fact my one and only POF Pear and Boxwood model was built before I owned a Byrnes Saw. Dodging the safety question, the large table Saw is more forgiving than the Byrnes Saw. It has the power to keep cutting where the Byrnes Saw would stall. The Byrnes Saw, a precision tool must be treated as such. Blades must be clean and sharp, the fence aligned, and the saw most be allowed to cut at its own pace. My experience is that the Saw works as well as it does only because of its precision manufacture. I doubt that a mass market tool would be any where near as useful. The NRG thin rip guide is an inexpensive and valuable improvement. My current very long term project does not require use of the Byrnes Saw for traditional modelmaking purposes like cutting strip wood. I is, however, a great tool for cutting precise grooves for jigs and fixtures. Since it uses blades made for the machining industry it works really well for cutting brass and aluminum. Roger

There are active discussions that pop up every so often on the forum about showing treenails on wooden planked hulls and nails on copper sheathing. Proponents seem to treat this more as a way to exhibit detailed craftsmanship than accurately replicating true to scale appearance. More politely, it’s a modeling convention. Since there are far fewer of us modeling steel hulled vessels adding riveted detail gets less attention. I personally choose not to do it for a number of reasons. First, most steel hulled vessels are considerably larger than their commonly modeled wood sisters so are modeled at a smaller scale. The common modeling scale for wood hulled vessels is 1:48. My present project had a real life length of 240 ft. At this scale the model would be 60” long; too long for in home display so I am modeling this at a scale of 1:96. At this scale a 2” flattened rivet head is only about .02” in diameter; tiny. Many modelers look to the rivet detail on HO scale model railroads for inspiration. These domed head rivets are “Snap Head” rivets formed with a die. They were used to join relatively thin plating together. Heavy ship hull plating requiring high high structural strength and watertight construction was joined with “PanHead” rivets. The heavy Pan Head was usually located on the inside and the rivet’s Point was driven from the outside. The outboard end of a properly driven rivet was nearly flush, and almost invisible at any reasonable scale viewing distance. Rivet patterns were determined by rules published by the various Classification Societies that graded vessels for insurance purposes. They specified different patterns for various applications within the hull. These were quite complex as they specified both the pattern and the number of rows of rivets. Accurately modeling these therefore, requires a hull plating expansion drawing. Just showing a single line of rivets in inaccurate and misleading. Roger

Here in the US we call this stuff Bondo. I have found it to be very durable. I have a Navy Steam Cutter model that is 35 years old. I made the cylindrical boiler by casting a blob using a pipe for a mold and then turning the casting on a lathe. It is still as good as new. The only problem that I have encountered recently is that it sets up so quickly that it would be impossible to spread it carefully. Roger

As a teenager I spent several summers at a Summer Naval School on a lake in Northwestern Indiana. They had a fleet of “Whaleboats”; heavy wooden double ended boats rowed with 6- 8 oars. One oar per rower. During the stroke one’s butt was lifted off the thwart thereby transferring body weight to to pulling the oar. The stretcher absorbed the reactive force from the stroke. The stretchers in the sliding seat shells serve the same purpose except here the force comes from leg muscles. In building my RN Longboat model, I included stretchers. Roger

An overlooked product for gluing small parts to wooden surfaces is clear lacquer based nail polish available in any drugstore cosmetics dept. Brand is unimportant as long as it is lacquer and not acrylic. Roger

For Iberian vessels I suggest Vanguards of Empire. This describes Spanish practices for designing the hull.

Byrnes saws do one thing exceptionally well; they cut small dimensioned lumber and brass to exceptionally close tolerances they are helpful if not essential for scratch building models. The Proxxon saws are close but no cigar. I would not use my Byrnes Saw for cutting hardwood framing from rough sawn lumber. For building wood framed glass display cases a full sized table will suit you better. Most of the work is ripping and grooving. I use single strength glass and a blade that will cut a 1/8” kerf is necessary. Miters can be cut with a quality miter box but a table saw with the proper blade and a good adjustable crosscut guide will work better. I use a set of Sears Craftsman moulding cutters mounted on my table saw for the moulded edges of the case, but a Router can do this too. My present table Saw is a 10in Delta bought used. This is a bid heavy brute not intended for shipping to a new duty station every three years or so. My two previous saws were much smaller 8in saws that built several cases just fine. I would look at Lowe’s, Home Depot, Etc. To see what they offer. You need: 5/8in arbor. rigid fence and crosscut guide Power!! No such thing as too much 3/4hp minimum Largest table for your $$ Ball bearings Adjustable depth of cut (for grooving) The lower prices saws are probably one of the familiar hand power saws mounted upside down in an arbor. Higher quality saws feature separate motors with v belts. Variable speed? If offered, a useless marketing gimmick. I second Jaager’s suggestion for finding a quality used saw. Roger

I seem to remember seeing this model displayed by Bluejacket at a NRG conference. The kit builds into a handsome model. If your RRS Discovery only has to wait a month while you build this model I’d be surprised. Or maybe you work on the US Navy System: “ If you can’t get your work done in the 24 hr day, work nights!”😆 Roger

Jon, your plating looks great. For some very small parts that I have been fabricating I have been using a soldering with a long narrow conical tip. It has been hard to keep it clean. I have one of those cleaners with the coiled brass but it didn’t work well for this particular iron. So, I bought a sponge cleaner- less than $2.00 on Amazon without the plastic box. I put it in my own box and added water. It works much better. The sponge material is some kind of wood cellulose. An ordinary household sponge would melt. Roger

Here’s what you can do: 1. Determine the spot on the hull where the shape is correct. 2. With a fine toothed Saw slice the hull horizontally at the height of the horn timber, moving forward from the transom to the spot determined in step 1. 3 turn the model upside down and make a vertical cut downward to intersect with the horizontal slice. 4. Glue a block of wood into the space that you just created in steps 2 & 3. 5 Carve the block to the correct round tuck shape. Roger

Looks great, Patrick. Old romantic depictions of Sixteenth Century warships show them as fat and bluff bowed. The actual lines recently developed from Nautical Archeology show them to be surprisingly fined lined. Your Golden Hind and now your Mary Rose nicely captures the actual shape of these ships. Roger

Tony, Thanks for sharing these with us. It’s always a pleasure to see original models of these vessels. I love visiting museums in your country; something that we have sadly not done since Covid descended on the World. I remember spending an afternoon at Chatham. I still have the sample piece of rope made for us at the ropewalk. We also spent time chatting with the docent in the ship model display. Several days earlier we visited Chartwell, where the docent in Churchill’s living room practically brought me to tears talking about his relationship with FDR that saved Western Civilization. We found that if you just show a little more interest than the ordinary tourist they enjoy talking to you. Not necessarily so in the USA where a canned talk is the norm.

Eric Ronnberg’s article complete with large scale, accurate color chips was published in the NRJ in the early 1990’s and republished in Volume II of the Guild’s Shop Notes. Highly recommended, but unfortunately the period covered is later than the White Stuff era. Roger

An innovative solution, nicely executed!

I think that I still have a large scale set of plans for Dorothy. Back in the ‘80’s NRG held a conference at Point Comfort, VA and I met someone from NNSD who sent them to me. If you decide to build a model of her I would be happy to send them to you. Roger

Chesapeake Bay was home to a large collection of unique watercraft: Skipjacks, Bugeyes, Log Canoes, Schooners, Sloops, Buy Boats, Ducktails, etc. Some like Shipjacks were specialized craft designed for dredging oysters in the open waters of the bay but the others were equivalent to today’s short haul trucks carrying seafood and agricultural products to and from the markets, so they certainly would have appeared on the York River. Fortunately for model builders, Chesapeake Bay craft have been extensively studied and Documented by knowledgeable Naval Architects and historians: Howard Chapelle, MV Brewington, Robert Burgess, and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum at St. Michaels, MD to name a few. If you are willing to dig a little you can build one of these craft to whatever level of detail that you might wish. Also, the craft are relatively small with compact rigging so your your daughter will not have to move out of the house to make room for the model. Pride of Baltimore II is a replica. Her underwater hull lines were drastically modified following the loss of Pride I to improve transverse stability. She, therefore, cannot be considered to represent an authentic Bay built sailing vessel. As Chris points out there are kits purporting to build authentic models of Bay working craft. But why not scratch build a unique and authentic Bay Working Craft. Roger

Battle scenes with real soldiers, cannons and lots of action is expensive. A love story with a couple of sex scenes tossed in for good measure is cheap. Roger

Google 1:48 scale car tires. Lots of sources.

My opinion, not researched fact. Separating coatings of topsides and bottoms at a designed load waterline required knowing the weight and buoyancy at the load condition at which the vessel was intended to float. Some shipwrights could calculate buoyancies at different waterlines using similar numerical approximations as those embedded in today’s Computer systems. They lacked, however an accurate way to determine the weight of the vessel prior to launch. Prior to coppering there was also little need to paint the topsides differently than the bottom. The logical place to end the (cheap) white or black stuff would be just below the Wales. Prestige vessels might have been treated differently. Roger

There appears to be a pecking order with Swedes and Danes vs the Norwegians and Finns. We used to hear lots of Sven and Oley jokes but not so much any more. In Grand Maris MN on Lake Superior near the Canadian border there’s even a Sven and Oley’s Pizza. Roger