Roger Pellett

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

The PVA glues are nearly odorless and at least in my case using them causes no side effects.  CA glues cause a nasty sinus reaction. 

I would like to see Jim come up with an adaptor or series of adaptors that would allow us to use some of the more common; metric size? Blades on his saw.

John D. Rockefeller was an investor in the American Steel Barge Company formed to build Alexander McDougall’s patented whaleback barges and steamships.  Faced with loss of his investment when the company ran out of working capital in 1893 he took control.  This naturally resulted in a fight with other members of the investment syndicate.  In the verbal barbs thrown back and forth, Rockefeller’s representative charged the other investors with starting companies only to “boom the towns” where they owned large real estate holdings.

In the case of Everett Washington, named after the son of one of the investors, there is some truth to this claim.  The investment syndicate bought the land on the belief (McDougall claims that it was his idea) that it would be the terminus of one of the Transcontinental railroads.  They then started a number of businesses to attract other development.  One of these was the Pacific Steel Barge Company to build and operate whaleback ships.

Machinery to equip the shipyard and presumably build one or more ships was delivered by the whaleback steamship Charles W. Wetmore that sailed around the horn from New York.  The Wetmore was then transferred to Pacific Steel Barge and placed in West Coast service, only to be wrecked by grounding shortly thereafter.  The yard did build one whaleback steamship the City of Everett specifically designed for salt water.  She sailed for 30 years before disappearing in the Gulf of Mexico.

In his efforts to put the American Steel Barge Company on a firm financial footing ,Rockefeller closed Pacific Steel Barge after completing the City of Everett.

Roger

Here is a picture of one of a pair of 28 ft US Navy cutters that I vacuum formed for a model of the US Navy Monitor Catskill.  Scale is 1:96.

Excellent job!

If you are willing to use plastic vacuum forming is super easy.  Your shop vac should provide more than enough suction.  Either use the boat that came with the kit or carve a plug for a form.

The chuck on my drill press will not close on drills less than 3/32in dia so I chuck smaller drills in a pin vice and chick that in the press chuck.

Not a mast, but hopefully useful.

I just finished making a 5/16in dia wooden ramrod for a muzzle loading rifle that I  restored.  I first ripped a piece of square stock from a piece of hickory lumber.  Using a board with a v-groove I used a spokeshave to plane it to an eight sided section and 80 grit sandpaper to turn it into a circular cross section.

I then had the problem of reducing the diameter of this 36in long stick to fit into the ferrules of the gun stock.  After trying several ideas including turning it with my electric drill I tried a CABINET SCRAPER.  I worked this a section at a time scraping with the grain while rotating the piece by hand.  This worked well and produced a good result.  Cabinet scrapers need to be sharpened, a misnomer since the scraping action is produced by a burr on the scraper edge.  The technique is to file or grind a square edge and to then to produce a burr with a burnisher or other smooth hard surfaced tool dragged along the edge.

Roger

Very nice work, Tom.

It would help to know where you live as the US uses a different system than the rest of the World.

Here in the US there are several series of drill bits.  The most common are graduated in 1/64th fractions of an inch.  In outfitting a shop I would start by buying a set of high speed steel bits from 1/16 thru 1/4in.  Well taken care of these should last a long time and if you break one it will be easily replaced at any hardware or home improvement store.  Bits larger than 1/4in are can be added as needed.

The second system are numbered bits 1-80 (I think). These are useful as many sizes are required to drill holes for US NC and NF threads.  Again buy sizes 60 and above when and if needed.

For ship model building you will need a set of drills under 1/16in.  Model suppliers, jewelers suppliers, and Amazon sell sets of #80 thru #61 in a circular drill stand.  You can also buy very small carbide resharpened bits inexpensively and some modelers like them but they are very brittle and break easily.

There are also lettered sizes; A, B, C, etc.  I have never run into a project that has required these and am unfamiliar with them.

Roger

Well said Bob!

My wife has recently discovered that she can call the phone in my shop on her cell phone. So much for peace and quiet.

If Cornhusker’s  question refers to building a J Boat Endeavour kit it may not follow the actual practice of planking landed in a rabbit cut into the stem and he will have to follow the kit designer’s system.

If on the other hand, if he wants to build a J Boat from scratch two books have recently been published that warrant his attention:

The first is “No Ordinary Being” by Llewelyn Howland.  This is a biography of W. Starling Burgess.  Burgess designed three J Boats; Enterprise (1930), Rainbow (1934) and Ranger (1937 in collaboration with Olin Stevens).  The book contains small scale lines drawings for two boats- Enterprise and Ranger.  A large scale lines drawing for Ranger is printed on the endpapers but the book’s center crease runs thru the body plan.  Unfortunately no structural drawings are included.

A more useful book is Volume I of Roger Taylor’s biography of L. Francis Herreshoff.  Herreshoff designed one J Boat, Whirlwind, an unsuccessful contender for the 1934 cup and the book’s chapter on the selection of the American Defender makes interesting reading.  The selection committee wound up choosing Rainbow that was generally considered to be slower than the British Challenger.  Despite sailing a slower boat, the Americans narrowly managed to keep the cup.

One could probably build a model of Whirlwind from the information contained in Howland’s book.  Mystic Seaport, the publisher has chosen to print a lines drawing and a construction drawing as large fold out plates.

The second volume of Howland’s two volume set deals with Herreshoff’s subsequent career designing cruising boats and writing for the Rudder Magazine.  This is my favorite as it includes his Prudence (H-23) sloop, a boat that my father built right after WW II.  There is a brief quotation from a letter that my father wrote to Herreshoff about building the boat.

Roger

The Pride of Baltimore has a running main topmast backstay that would be tensioned when the gaff topsail is set.  She does not have a backstays leading to the top of the main mast.  Under working sail, without the gaff topsail set,  she is, therefore, capable of sailing without a backstay.

She is actually Pride of Baltimore II, the first Pride was lost off the Barbados in 1986.  In designing the second Pride, naval Architect Thomas Gillmer modified the underwater hull lines to increase stability but did not change her rig to add backstays.

Another example would be the Schooner Yacht America.  Her heavily raked masts were not fitted with backstays.

Roger

In my business career I made numerous trips to China, both Taiwan and the Mainland and the Chinese traditionally like to host a lavish banquet for their visitors.  They served lots of exotic dishes, sea slugs, donkey, and snake; it actually did taste liken chicken.  In most cases I figured that if it didn’t kill them, it wouldn’t kill me and ate at least some of what they served.  

I had had to pass on a plate of whole grilled sparrows; served with heads, beaks, legs, and feet.  They put the whole thing in their mouth and spit out the bones.

Roger

American small fast sailing vessels of the period in question were notorious for being lightly rigged.  There are contemporary paintings of Chesapeake Bay Pilot Boats with masts that are completely unstayed no shrouds or stays.  The Baltimore Clippers were decendents of these small high speed Schooners.

There is an Admiralty drawing of a rigged longboat in W.E. May’s book on ships boats.  This sloop rigged boat with raked mast has no backstays

I don’t know about local cabinet shops but small “woodpecker” sawmills are often very reluctant to saw wood of unknown origin because of the possibility of embedded foreign metal.  Guys that I have talked to have told me that “If I hit metal while sawing your lumber you just bought a very expensive blade.”

If you can’t or don’t want to invest in your own equipment, you’re better off buying a kit from a quality manufacturer that provides quality wood.

Roger

With their heavily raked masts would these vessels have needed backstays?

Tom,

You’re doing this the hard way.  Easier to make two mirror image half models.  Leave the sail and rudder off.  Include the dowel holes matched to align the two half models.  

Shape the hulls.  The ideal tool for this is a set of small spokeshaves but chisels and small planes work too.  Keep your tools sharp.

As you refine the shape, check with your templates.  The beauty of shaping the two halves independently is that you have a defined centerline; the flat surface between the two hull halves that can be laid on another flat surface when checking the shape.

As you get close, switch to progressively finer grades of sandpaper.  Use a sanding block.  Once you are satisfied with the shape glue the two halves together and add the sail and rudder.

Roger

People today don’t understand how important these creative activities are to kids.  As a child growing up, I had an erector set, some Lionel trains that I still have, and my Dad’s workshop. All contributed to lifetime interests and career choices.  

Electric trains are a good good way to introduce kids to electrical circuits.  Back in the. Day before miniaturized electronics  it was amazing what Lionel was able to do with wires and magnets. 

Roger

I don’t understand the advantage of mounting the swivel gun atop the capstan.  Maybe as an anti personnel weapon if boarded?

On the other hand it was a custom at the time to use small arms as decorations.  Many British large country homes have arrays of muskets, pistols, and swords on the walls.

Roger

Steven,  My friend and neighbor was an interesting guy.  As a young Doctor he served as medical officer on a US Navy Destroyer in the Pacific during World War II.  The only thing that I know about his service is that he claimed being on a ship with a bunch of healthy guys in their 20’s there was nothing for him to do.

After the war he practiced Medicine here in Duluth as a Radiologist for many years and was highly regarded.

After retiring he enjoyed spending winters in Florida.  We visited him there once and discovered that he was completing a beautiful model of a Model Shipways kit of the Fishing Schooner “Smuggler.”  He told be that he also finished a whaling ship model for a Florida Neighbor.

He was able to live in his home around the corner from us until he was in is late ‘90s.

Roger