Roger Pellett

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.

I just finished reading A Column of Fire, Ken Follett’s Novel about the reign of Queen Elizabeth (the first one).  It’s the January selection of our mens’ book Group.

Follett is a skilled writer and does a good job of explaining English History through the eyes of several protagonists but in this case the novel was spoiled by his apparent complete misunderstanding of Elizabethan maritime technology.  This is important as one of the protagonists is a ship captain and as the defeat of the Spanish Armada should be a climax of the story.

Examples:  The sea captain character’s ship is over 100ft long with a beam one fifth of its length; a galley maybe?  It has three masts; square rigged on the first and third and lateen rigged on the second!

In their voyage up the Channel, both the Spanish and English vessels are constantly “dropping sail” to have conferences.  I guess that he never heard of stopping a square rigged ship by heaving to.  The Spanish are such expert sailors  that they can drop their sails in unison; whatever that means.

And last but not least before engaging the enemy it was necessary to first “untie the guns.”

At the end of this 910 page book he acknowledges the impressive list of experts that advised him on various topics.  Conspicuously absent was anyone with a maritime history connection.  I doubt that they are difficult to find in Great Britain.

Roger

The American Steel Barge Company built ships by doing exactly what you did.  They lengthened or shortened vessels with a given beam depth combination by adding or deducting frames in the parallel mid body.  A lack of sheer made this possible and reduced construction costs.

Roger

Jaager,

Thanks for the tip regarding specialized arbor hole adaptors.  It looks like it is time to spend some money with Jim.  I bought my saw before he offered the higher fence so I would like to add this.  The saw also needs an all round tune up.

Roger