Roger Pellett

Hi Steve, that’s a fascinating coincidence! Your Great Grandfather certainly made a wise decision. On the other hand, had he been in command he might have waited out the storm behind the lee side of the Kewanee Penninsula and saved the lives of all on board. But there was probably little warning. Radio technology was in its infancy, the transmitting and receiving sets were huge, and I’m not sure that the Noble was even fitted with an electrical system. Marconi’s manopoly also required a dedicated operator. As a result, Great Lakes bulk carriers would not be fitted with radios for many years. The Weather Service would have posted storm warning flags at the SOO had they known but midwestern weather can change quickly. It’s entirely possible that those on board the Noble wouldn’t have been aware of the storm until it was too late. In my opinion, Francombe, the vessel’s manager bears the entire responsibility for her loss. He assigned too much cargo to haul and then hired a young captain that could be convinced to overload her. Hi Dave, sorry to hear that you moved from Minnesota. I hope that you are enjoying life in Arizona. I don’t know if you heard but Sara Blanck left the Meteor Museum shortly after my book reception. Since then I have had little to no contact with them. The new director seems to be hostile to the idea of Developing the Meteor into anything other than a Tourist Attraction. There are things going on in the background that I don’t understand. I apologize for letting this thread sit idle. While it would seem that I would have lots of modeling time due to Covid19. I have been cleaning up a number of part finished non ship model projects before moving ahead. Roger

There are acid free archival tapes and glues that claim to be reversible. Look for them on Amazon.

The LED gooseneck tool light over the lathe in the photo below was bought from Amazon. It can be fastened down anywhere. I seem to recall that it cost about $25. It would be easy to mount it for use with a scroll saw. The other thing that I should mention is a dust blower to blow the sawdust away from the blade. The one that came with my saw died.

I assume that the “James White System” refers to the diagonal planking. It will be interesting to see how how this works out at scale. On the real thing, diagonal planking was used to allow wooden boats normally kept out of the water to be launched as necessary without first having to have the planking swelled up. To help this, white lead or a waterproofed fabric membrane could be applied between the two layers.

If the cross section that you show for Charles Martel above reflects the actual ship she must have had serious stability problems. The circular cross section below the waterline indicates low metacentric height as the center of buoyancy does not move off the centerline as the vessel heels. Worse the extreme tumblehome means that she does not gain righting moment when heeling at larger angles. Roger

Before the advent of steam power small fast vessels relied on Superior ability to sail to windward to avoid capture by larger square rigged vessels. This accounts for the popularity of Sloops and later Schooners by Americans and cutters by the British and Luggers by the French. In a downwind chase in a strong wind there is no way that one of these small sailing vessels could escape from a frigate or large sloop of war due to differences in maximum hull speeds imposed by waterline lengths. Their only chance to escape was to sail to windward. Roger

Since you are a relative newcomer to our fascinating hobby, I offer a different opinion. You are building a kit model and intend to move on to more projects later. Whenever you build a model from a kit you are limited to the kit designer’s decisions as well as manufacturing limitations necessary to mass produce the kit. I suggest that you stop worrying about the kit supplied rigging line and instead focus on building the hull and deck furniture. When you are finished with this, if you still want to super detail the model then you can replace the kit supplied line with something else. One the other hand if you do a good job using the kit supplied line you can still be proud of your accomplishment and will have gained experience to move on to your next project. IMHO it’s premature to worry about the rigging line at this point. Roger

Interesting project!

Just speculation: The heavy lapped planks add longitudinal strength to the hull girder where it does the most good. They also resist local damage to the hull in the event of a grounding or even in some cases, ice. According to the WoodenBoat article she has been modified several times so presumably we don’t know if the hull was planked this way originally.

During the 1800’s and as late as 1900 the US Navy refers to what we would call Brass, Composition Metal.

The Schooner Yacht America was actually a smuggler at one time. During the Civil War she was a Confederate Blockade Runner and Federal Blockaders found her in a river in Florida where she had been sunk to avoid capture. She was refloated and placed into service with the US Navy. Those who attended the 2019 NRG Conference and visited the Naval War College Museum will have been treated to a spectacular model of her in her naval guise. Roger

When the late Harold Hahn was writing in the Nautical Research Journal he was using surgical silk thread for the very fines in his models. Since then silk thread has acquired a reputation for decaying over time. I would assume that the same would be true of silk cloth (not Silkspan paper)? Roger

I don’t remember all of the twists and turns of the discussion elsewhere on the forum but I believe that we concluded that American practice was to make the circles from iron. The Smithsonian institution apparently agrees with this as the tracks in their Civil War warship models are black.

In most cases the cloth is also way over scale

Very Nice! Is this the plane that sunk the Arizona? It is my understanding that she exploded from one or more bombs made from armor piercing shells and dropped from high altitude bombers; not from dive bombers.

It would seem that one could do a lot of damage in a hurry with this thing. The Sawzall, It’s big brother is generally used for rough carpentry and demolition.

Thank you Keith, In my case the book only exists because of a fortuitous alignment of the planets: A topic that had been inadequately covered, the existence of previously uncovered research, a museum dedicated to the topic of the book with some unused grant money to pay staff members to help me, and a faculty member at the University that runs the Press who helped sell the book to them. In my case, these things are unlikely to occur again and I’d rather be spending my time in my shop. Financially, the modest sum paid to the indexer still exceeds the royalties that I received. Still I am pleased to see my research in a published form. I agree that Bob Ferrman’s semi-retirement at SeaWatch books is a major blow to our ship modeling community; to authors as well as model builders. Roger

Use silkspan or even rice paper stiffened/colored with acrylic model paint. Draw panels as Druxey says. Glue on bolt ropes and reinforcing panels with white or yellow wood glue.

Keith, Having recently published a book, actually two books; my first and my last, it can be a time consuming task. For me, writing it was the easy part. The hard part was done by two talented inviduals employed by a local museum that graciously donated their time. This included word processing my individual chapters into a cohesive format, tracking down owners of copywrited materials and getting written permission to publish their work, and getting illustrations that I selected into a form that could be published. I was also fortunate that one of these “helpers” was a retired university research librarian who knew what needed to be done. I was also responsible for hiring someone to index the book. The other was a recent University graduate with bulldog determination. She recently independently published an article about Great Lakes shipping and attended the Steam School on board the Liberty Ship in Baltimore Harbor. My librarian friend also spent considerable time writing and organizing the materials to send to prospective publishers, each of which required a business plan for the book. Once a university press agreed to publish the book they insisted on a single point of contact: me. In the ten years since retirement I had focused on things other than up to date computer technology so communicating with them was a hurdle to overcome. MSW is blessed with some talented authors who have produced wonderful books of stunning artistic quality published mostly by SeaWatch. The fact that they not only built amazing models but also produced high quality books speaks volumes about their ability. In my case, however, without the help that I received from others my book would still be nothing but a good idea. Roger

Very nice work! Hopefully by next September we’ll all be vaccinated and it will be safe for you to head down I-77 to Marietta for the Sternwheel Festival. There is usually a collection of home built sternwheel yachts of various descriptions mostly sprocket and chain driven. And the fireworks over the Ohio River are spectacular! Roger

If you have a table saw, minirature or otherwise, a taper jig is easy to make from scrap lumber. With this you can cut tapers easily and quickly. If you don’t want to make and use a marking gage the mark 1 eyeball works well to plane an octagon. Once you have a tapered octagon, the rest is easy. There are also spars that taper in a curve instead of a straight line. Here again it is easier to first cut a straight taper and then add the curvature. A disc sander could be used for this. In building anything it’s easier to work with straight lines than curves. While it might seem easier to make a round spar from a round dowel, it is easier to cut the basic shape from a rectangular piece of wood before shaping the circular cross section. Roger

Thanks Eric, I’ll add it to my reading list.

Instead of sanding, try scraping with the grain instead. A single edge razor blade makes a good mini scraper. Easier to control than sanding.

I used a full sized scraper on my ramrod.

I actually have a pretty good shelf of non-fiction books on English History. Having finished this book a month before our January Zoom meeting I am fact checking. So for he appears to be sticking to the known facts in describing historical events. I felt, however, that he was particularly ignorant of Elizabethan Seamanship and just winged it instead of doing even the modest research needed for an authentic description. Eric, I agree that sometimes he fails to put the reader into the era that he is writing about. There is one scene where a character is visiting William Allen’s English College in France that prepares priests to be smuggled into England. He meets an acolyte named Leonard who upon meeting him says “Call me Lenny.” This might work in a crime novel set in the 1950’s but it doesn’t work here. Our group read Pillars several years ago and I enjoyed it.