Roger Pellett

My mid Eighteenth Century longboat model was painted entirely with “homemade” acrylic paints, and I was pleased with the results. I needed five colors: Dark red Dark Brown Creamy White Black Drab I started by buying tubes of quality artist’s acrylic pigments at a local crafts store: Burnt Umber Black Titanuim White Bright Red. yellow ochre I also bought a bottle of matt media fluid. It pays to buy high quality pigments. I bought a large tube of yellow ochre at a well known discount department store at a bargain price and found it to be unusable due to the large granules of pigment. You could have paved my driveway with this stuff. I also bought a number of small glass bottles with screw top lids from Amazon, a battery operated Micro Mark propeller type paint mixer, and a palate knife. My understanding of scientific color technology is negligible. All colors were mixed by Mark 1 eyeball. The Drab color was a mystery. A contemporary specification required the the hull interior be painted drab. I found an old paint formula on the web that explained that drab was mixed by adding white lead pigment to burnt umber. I started by mixing pigments on a small glass palate using the palate knife. When I got the right color I scooped the mixed pigment into one of the small jars and added matt media, again by eye. The paint mixer worked perfectly to blend the resulting mixture. Thinned by adding water, it sprayed perfectly in my airbrush. When I was finally convinced that my paint job was complete I protected the finish with a light coat of Dulcote. The mixed paint kept in the small jars stayed fresh over the several months spent completing the model. I can understand the need for modelers of modern military vessels to paint them with the “right” color matched to official color charts, but for ships built prior to the late 1800’s for which color standards are minimal my eyeball method worked well. Roger

Your first coat of paint is somewhat sacrificial as it will probably highlight rough spots and other defects that were not apparent before painting. Much of it will then be sanded away. if you are using an acrylic paint that is thinned with water it will raise the grain giving the hull an overall rough appearance; again more sanding. I have built and still do build solid carved wood models. In my opinion you do not need to buy a special primer for this first coat. I have primed hulls with alkyd resin (oil based) paints, acrylic paints, and paints sprayed from hardware store rattle cans. All work as long as they are compatible with the next coats that you are going to put on top. As far as color goes something that is easy for your eye to find defects; probably white or light grey. Roger

I asked because there was a young draftsman who worked for me in our engineering department who had been commissioned here in Duluth by Carr’s Hobby Shop just around the corner from where we worked to draw up a set of modelers plans for the Fitzgerald. This guy was a self proclaimed CADD whiz and when I heard about his moonlighting project, I asked him about developing a lines drawing, the starting point for any accurate ship model. He had no idea of what I was talking about. Shortly before her loss in November of 1975 the Fitzgerald was “stretched” by Fraser Shipbuilding in Superior, Wisconsin just across the St. Louis River Estuary from Duluth. This was accomplished by cutting her in half and adding a prefabricated parallel midbody section. There was and still is some speculation that longitudinal strength calculations of her lengthened hull were inadequate leading to her loss. Especially as her wreckage lies in two pieces. Is it therefore possible that your plans show her in her as launched condition, prior to lengthening? Check the beam against published dimensions, It did not change. Roger

The “coppering” is most likely the artist’s representation of red lead paint. Note that does not extend all the to the load waterline; only as far as the ship would be expected to float light. In addition to Bob Cleek’s reasons above, The copper sheathing would be damaged during launch. For launch, the ship is supported on the ways by two supports, one in the bow and one in the stern called poppets. If the naval architect has done his job properly the stern will lift off the ways as it enters the water and gains buoyancy. This means that the bow must rotate about the fore poppet. While the fore poppet is designed to crush when the bow rotates, some rubbing between the ship and poppet would be unavoidable. Roger

Kent, Good choice, if I can good results with my Badger 350, I’m sure that you will do even better. Roger

Who drew the plans for your model? It’s coming along nicely. Roger

Everyone has different work habits and abilities and mine are not the best. I struggle to maintain a clean work environment. Keeping an airbrush clean requires periodic disassembly so for me simple and rugged is better. I have a Badger 350 airbrush. In fact I have a spare but that’s another story. It works well with my home mixed acrylic paints and is foolproof for me to disassemble and clean. No long needles to bend. It is available in three nozzle types, coarse, medium, and fine but the different nozzles all fit on the same body. I pretty much just spray paint so I don’t feel that I need the additional features of a double acting mode.l. My air source is a no name compressor bought at Menards for about $100. It has a regulator to control air pressure- Very Important- and a 3 gallon tank. Fitted with quick disconnects it also powers an air nailer and easily pumped up a flat tire on my wife’s car. For me, having a good controllable air source is more important than a fancier airbrush. Roger

I checked two contemporary sources. Wilson’s Practial Shipbuilding- 1870 and the 1866 Ordnance Instructions. I also checked Arming of the Fleet by Tucker. Other than a mention of Deck Circles nothing is said. This lack of information does provide some circumstantial evidence about them. Wilson’s book discusses bolts securing gun tackles in great detail. It also includes rules where equipment mounted on deck required mortising of deck structure. These thru hole fasteners and deck modifications were apparently considered to be part of the ship itself and therefore under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Construction and Repair. Arming of the completed ship was the responsibility of the Bureau of Ordnance. If the deck circles did not require modification of the ship, there was no need to provide information about them in a shipbuilding text. This leads me to agree with Wefalk that these deck circles were laid on top of the deck and screwed down with large flat head wood screws. As a practical matter mortises into the decking and thru bolts would have been a source of leaking and rot. I believe that American practice was wrought iron deck circles laid on top of the deck and secured with large flat head deck screws. Roger

Leather dyes purchased from your local shoemaker, if your city still has one of these dying breeds, are great for staining blocks made from hard woods like boxwood and pear.

In the context of 1805, “Lifeboats” were boats that could be launched quickly to recover a man overboard so these tended to be relatively light seaworthy boats. In the sailing US Navy these were often naval versions of whaleboats. Launched quickly means that they had to be hung from davits. The idea of “man the lifeboats we’re sinking” was a much later concept. Imagine trying to quickly launch a 30ft+ launch quickly. These boats were workboats launched to handle specific tasks. Prior to the Seventeenth Century these boats could be quite large and were often towed astern. In the Eighteenth Century these boats were smaller and could be stowed on board. As long as boats have been made of wood they have been a nuisance and hazard in battle. As late as WWII a burning boat on board was an unwanted source of illumination during a night action. I therefore believe that Captains during the age of sail did not hesitate to jetson boats when clearing for action. Roger

Another possible future conference venue that looks interesting is the Civil War Navy Museum in Columbus, Georgia

OC, Have you tried using your paint straight out of the bottle with no matt medium added. I have been painting a series of American Civil War soldiers with Vallejo acrylic prussian blue paint straight from the bottle. It dries without gloss. Roger

You have a nice library there, Hank. Your a/c- heater will help protect it. Books do not do well in high humidity. Roger

Fairly Nice is an understatement! Your paint job looks great. Your models really show how “fat” these Grumman planes were. A design philosophy that apparently carried over to their Wildcat and Hellcat fighters. I had a friend in college whose father was an executive with Grumman. It turned out that prior to joining Grumman, his father had been the designer of the 1930’s air racer Gee Bee, the epitome of the short, fat radial engine powered aircraft, and supposedly very hard to fly. I wonder to what extent he influenced the design of these planes. Roger

The Bessemer and Open Hearth technologies to make steel in commercially available quantities were not available in the United States until after the Civil War. The first Bessemer plant began production in 1867 and the first Open Hearth process approximately 20 years later in the 1880’s. In this context, the term “steel” refers to an alloy of iron alloyed with a small (controlled) amount of carbon. Although the Crucible process was available for making steel in small batches it was an expensive material used for special applications. Much of it would have been imported. Much of what we call “steel” in early America was, therefore, “Iron” in two forms. Cast iron, a high carbon iron alloy was used for making products shaped by pouring molten metal into a mold. Cast iron was unsuitable where the part was subjected to cyclical loads or where the product’s final shape was determined by hot working; forging or rolling. For these applications, wrought iron was used. Wrought iron was formed by stirring (puddling) silica slag into a semi molten ball of iron. When rolled in a rolling mill this produced laminar fibers of slag in a soft iron matrix. Wrought iron was a tough, ductile, and, versitle widely used material. The railroads that supplied the Civil War armies ran on wrought iron rails, and the Confederates cannibalized these to armor their ironclads. Union ironclads were also armored with wrought iron. Wrought iron proved also to be an excellent, durable, shipbuilding material proven by the long term survival of the steamship Great Britain. With its availability, durability, and proven ability to withstand heavy rolling loads, I would lean towards its use for these cannon tracks. American naval engineers were cost conscious, and in a hurry to expand the Union Navy to meet the needs of President Lincoln’s blockade. Navy ships had large crews with plenty of time on their hands and rust stains could be minimized by a sailor with a holystone. During war time, navies also tend to forgoe spit and polish to fight. Roger

The first NRG Conference that I attended took place in the historic town of Marietta, Ohio, population 16,000 and 100 miles from any sizable city. My wife and I were living there and I read about the upcoming conference in our local small town newspaper. I had never heard of the Guild prior to this. Attendees included Harold Hahn, Bob Bruckshaw, Jack Kerzow, and Merrit Edson, all regular NRJ contributors and master modelers. I joined up immediately and have been a member ever since (45 years this October).

For those of you interested in the Civil War Navy, I just started reading Engines of Rebellion by Saxton T. Bisbee. The book is about the Confederate Ironclads and their engines in particular. The first chapter is a good summary of the state of the art of 1860’s marine engineering. Roger

I visited the Dossin Museum in Detroit years ago. Unless it has been renovated in the past several years, I found little of interest there. For those of us who routinely travel with our spouses, it’s not worth going if they are going to be unhappy. Many of us are older and our spouses are too. If the conference is held in an urban area, they will be too intimidated to venture out on their own, and it increases stress on those of us attending if they do. In this regard Mystic and New Bedford were good choices and I assume that Oxnard, CA will be too.

I assume that your Vallejo paint comes in the little droplet bottles. Make sure that you thoroughly shake these up. I use a wierd technique where I shake it up and down vertically actually hitting my knee on the down stroke. This violent action seems to properly mix the flatting agent. Roger

If you have any interest in further researching or completing the model, Corothers’ two books are a must. Particularly helpful are tables itemizing hull features for different vessels so you can at least eliminate some possibilities. For example, Flying Cloud had a round stern so can be eliminated. This is not a sailor made model built by eyeball. The framing of this model required an accurate lines drawing. It is unlikely that the builder freelanced a lines drawing on his own before tackling this project. You therefore need to figure out what hull lines were available to this builder that match the hull features and principal dimensions that represent your model. Other useful references to help you do this would be Howard Chapelle’s Search for Speed Under Sail and his National Watercraft Collection. Do you know who built the model? If he was an NRG Member he might have written about it in the Journal. Another possibility is that the builder adapted a model kit plan to build the model. Old model kit catalogs are often offered on EBay. Look for A.J. Fisher, Marine Models, Bluejacket solid hull kits, not the European POB kits. Knowing what kit plans were available years ago might narrow down your possibilities, as it will give you an idea of the lines drawings that were available. What is the shape of the midships section; flat floors, deadrise, etc? Different naval architects had specific ideas. Keep us posted on your progress. Roger

If they sell Dulcote in the UK, buy a can.

The best reference for War of 1812 American vessels that fought on Lake Champlain is “Coffins of the Brave” Edited by Kevin J. Crisman and published by Texas A&M Press. Drawings of Saratoga, Eagle, Ticonderoga,and a Row Barge Gunboat are included as well as the British Brig Linnet. Roger

A varnish described as “Light Oak Gloss Varnish” is what used to be called a “varnish stain,” a pigmented varnish. This is not a product that I would associate with a high quality finish. I would first try try applying some clear varnish to a piece of scrap. You might find that this is all that you need. True varnishes generally tint the substrate that they are applied to; usually amber. if you decide that you need to stain it, I agree with Jaager. Stain separately from varnish. Oil based stains can be tricky. They are pigments suspended in a liquid, linseed oil or some sort of synthetic. Dense, close grained woods like maple, cherry, or pear can be difficult to stain. Instead of penetrating the grain structure, the pigment just sits on the surface. The usual technique is to apply the stain, let it sit, and then wipe off the excess. What usually happens (to me) is that everything just wipes off. A better choice would be some of the analine dye stains that do penetrate dense woods. These come as a concentrate and are diluted with alcohol. Varnishes come in four levels of sheen- Gloss, Semi-Gloss, Satin, and Matt. Try satin first. If you need more sheen, rub it down and try semi-gloss. Varnishes can be thinned, usually with mineral spirits to minimize buildup. Roger

I bought a set of brushes for painting military miniatures. Included were Liner brushes in several sixzes. These are longer than usual with a pointed tip. Roger

John, i’m sorry To hear about the loss of your dear wife Sylbie. From your earlier posts, it seemed like the two of you enjoyed many adventures together such as “the snake in the bedroom story” May these memories be a blessing to you. Best wishes Roger