Roger Pellett

Roger,
 
Where did you get the square brass wire? Is it available commercially or did you use a draw plate?
 
It may be a "fussy detail" but this is what sets an excellent model apart from an ordinary one.

… those to the uninitiated rather unspectacular details consume indeed a lot of time  👍

Underhill appears to be doing it the hard way!  Of course he was writing many years ago and new tools and materials have become available since.
 
Unless oyou are planning to put your chain under considerable tension, high temperature silver solder is not necessary.  Lead free solders are now available in a wide range of diameters. I have recently been using .010” diameter solder with good results.  Like Underhill, I like the liquid fluxes applied with a small brush.  They do a good job of drawing solder into the joint.  Finally, I prefer a fine tipped electric soldering iron to a torch.  With the very small sizes involved here an electric soldering iron will fuse the joint instaneously.
 
Roger

A very strong El Niño has given us a record winter; much above average temperatures and almost no snow. As a result, the SOO locks intend to open several days earlier than planned. Noteworthy this past month was the recent announcement of the discovery of the SS Arlington sunk in 600ft of water off Lake Superior’s  Kweanee Penninsula.  Arlington, sunk in 1940 shares several similarities with Benjamin Noble.  Both were close to the same size and were designed for the pulp wood trade.  Both were built by the same yard (five years apart). Arlington was loaded down with a late season grain cargo.  Heavy seas washed off hatch bars, tarpaulins, and la least one hatch failed entirely flooding her hold.
 
Work since my last post involved assembling the hatch covers on a backing piece of 1/64” plywood and fabrication of the hatch bars.  Wooden hatches float, so hatch bars were fastened atop to restrain them.  These were pieces of 3” steel angle bolted at the ends to padeyes attached to the deck.  For the model I used 1/32” square brass wire.  At each tip, I soldered a short piece of I/16” brass tubing.  A #75 hole through the top of the tube will accept the simulated hold down bolt.  A fussy detail requiring a frustrating amount of time.
 
Roger
 

Of course, Constitution has had a very long life during which she has been rebuilt and repaired several times.  For a considerable part of this time she sailed as an active unit of the US Navy so until recent times, her refits did not necessarily involve ensuring historical accuracy.  Even today, she is a hodgepodge of different periods.
 
Constitution underwent a major repair in the 1920’s.  There are photos of her during this repair in drydock with all exterior planking removed.  Apparently, during this repair a series of as built drawings were prepared.  In the 1990’s these drawings, on a DVD disc, were offered to the public.  I believe that the drawing that you have posted is one from the 1920’s.  To be useful to the level that you want you would have to be able to determine when different structural elements were added during which historic period.   
 
Roger

Phil (Dr Pr)’s post above exactly sums up the techniques that I have stumbled onto for soldering brass; Liquid flux, taking advantage of the latent heat of water for a heat sink, and avdab of solder on the the soldering iron tip.  I would add one other thing-  Find a solder that flows.  It seems that there are dozens of proprietary solders all advertised to have magic properties.  I have tried many.  For reasons that I don’t begin to understand some simply do not work for me.  For example, I have never had much luck with the solder-flux pastes.  While they work well for others, they don’t for me.  I don’t know why.  I have recently been using a lead free 1/32 in dia Weller formulation that flows beautifully (at least for me).
 
Druxey-  Regarding your jeweler’s trick, I suspect that the water is the heat sink.  The yellow ochre powder forms a paste to keep the water in place.  I use a tiny piece of wet twisted paper towel to do the same thing.  I have read that yellow ochre is used as a masque to prevent solder from flowing where it is not wanted.
 
Roger

A very strong El Niño has given us a record winter; much above average temperatures and almost no snow. As a result, the SOO locks intend to open several days earlier than planned. Noteworthy this past month was the recent announcement of the discovery of the SS Arlington sunk in 600ft of water off Lake Superior’s  Kweanee Penninsula.  Arlington, sunk in 1940 shares several similarities with Benjamin Noble.  Both were close to the same size and were designed for the pulp wood trade.  Both were built by the same yard (five years apart). Arlington was loaded down with a late season grain cargo.  Heavy seas washed off hatch bars, tarpaulins, and la least one hatch failed entirely flooding her hold.
 
Work since my last post involved assembling the hatch covers on a backing piece of 1/64” plywood and fabrication of the hatch bars.  Wooden hatches float, so hatch bars were fastened atop to restrain them.  These were pieces of 3” steel angle bolted at the ends to padeyes attached to the deck.  For the model I used 1/32” square brass wire.  At each tip, I soldered a short piece of I/16” brass tubing.  A #75 hole through the top of the tube will accept the simulated hold down bolt.  A fussy detail requiring a frustrating amount of time.
 
Roger
 

A very strong El Niño has given us a record winter; much above average temperatures and almost no snow. As a result, the SOO locks intend to open several days earlier than planned. Noteworthy this past month was the recent announcement of the discovery of the SS Arlington sunk in 600ft of water off Lake Superior’s  Kweanee Penninsula.  Arlington, sunk in 1940 shares several similarities with Benjamin Noble.  Both were close to the same size and were designed for the pulp wood trade.  Both were built by the same yard (five years apart). Arlington was loaded down with a late season grain cargo.  Heavy seas washed off hatch bars, tarpaulins, and la least one hatch failed entirely flooding her hold.
 
Work since my last post involved assembling the hatch covers on a backing piece of 1/64” plywood and fabrication of the hatch bars.  Wooden hatches float, so hatch bars were fastened atop to restrain them.  These were pieces of 3” steel angle bolted at the ends to padeyes attached to the deck.  For the model I used 1/32” square brass wire.  At each tip, I soldered a short piece of I/16” brass tubing.  A #75 hole through the top of the tube will accept the simulated hold down bolt.  A fussy detail requiring a frustrating amount of time.
 
Roger
 

A very strong El Niño has given us a record winter; much above average temperatures and almost no snow. As a result, the SOO locks intend to open several days earlier than planned. Noteworthy this past month was the recent announcement of the discovery of the SS Arlington sunk in 600ft of water off Lake Superior’s  Kweanee Penninsula.  Arlington, sunk in 1940 shares several similarities with Benjamin Noble.  Both were close to the same size and were designed for the pulp wood trade.  Both were built by the same yard (five years apart). Arlington was loaded down with a late season grain cargo.  Heavy seas washed off hatch bars, tarpaulins, and la least one hatch failed entirely flooding her hold.
 
Work since my last post involved assembling the hatch covers on a backing piece of 1/64” plywood and fabrication of the hatch bars.  Wooden hatches float, so hatch bars were fastened atop to restrain them.  These were pieces of 3” steel angle bolted at the ends to padeyes attached to the deck.  For the model I used 1/32” square brass wire.  At each tip, I soldered a short piece of I/16” brass tubing.  A #75 hole through the top of the tube will accept the simulated hold down bolt.  A fussy detail requiring a frustrating amount of time.
 
Roger
 

A very strong El Niño has given us a record winter; much above average temperatures and almost no snow. As a result, the SOO locks intend to open several days earlier than planned. Noteworthy this past month was the recent announcement of the discovery of the SS Arlington sunk in 600ft of water off Lake Superior’s  Kweanee Penninsula.  Arlington, sunk in 1940 shares several similarities with Benjamin Noble.  Both were close to the same size and were designed for the pulp wood trade.  Both were built by the same yard (five years apart). Arlington was loaded down with a late season grain cargo.  Heavy seas washed off hatch bars, tarpaulins, and la least one hatch failed entirely flooding her hold.
 
Work since my last post involved assembling the hatch covers on a backing piece of 1/64” plywood and fabrication of the hatch bars.  Wooden hatches float, so hatch bars were fastened atop to restrain them.  These were pieces of 3” steel angle bolted at the ends to padeyes attached to the deck.  For the model I used 1/32” square brass wire.  At each tip, I soldered a short piece of I/16” brass tubing.  A #75 hole through the top of the tube will accept the simulated hold down bolt.  A fussy detail requiring a frustrating amount of time.
 
Roger
 

A very strong El Niño has given us a record winter; much above average temperatures and almost no snow. As a result, the SOO locks intend to open several days earlier than planned. Noteworthy this past month was the recent announcement of the discovery of the SS Arlington sunk in 600ft of water off Lake Superior’s  Kweanee Penninsula.  Arlington, sunk in 1940 shares several similarities with Benjamin Noble.  Both were close to the same size and were designed for the pulp wood trade.  Both were built by the same yard (five years apart). Arlington was loaded down with a late season grain cargo.  Heavy seas washed off hatch bars, tarpaulins, and la least one hatch failed entirely flooding her hold.
 
Work since my last post involved assembling the hatch covers on a backing piece of 1/64” plywood and fabrication of the hatch bars.  Wooden hatches float, so hatch bars were fastened atop to restrain them.  These were pieces of 3” steel angle bolted at the ends to padeyes attached to the deck.  For the model I used 1/32” square brass wire.  At each tip, I soldered a short piece of I/16” brass tubing.  A #75 hole through the top of the tube will accept the simulated hold down bolt.  A fussy detail requiring a frustrating amount of time.
 
Roger
 

A very strong El Niño has given us a record winter; much above average temperatures and almost no snow. As a result, the SOO locks intend to open several days earlier than planned. Noteworthy this past month was the recent announcement of the discovery of the SS Arlington sunk in 600ft of water off Lake Superior’s  Kweanee Penninsula.  Arlington, sunk in 1940 shares several similarities with Benjamin Noble.  Both were close to the same size and were designed for the pulp wood trade.  Both were built by the same yard (five years apart). Arlington was loaded down with a late season grain cargo.  Heavy seas washed off hatch bars, tarpaulins, and la least one hatch failed entirely flooding her hold.
 
Work since my last post involved assembling the hatch covers on a backing piece of 1/64” plywood and fabrication of the hatch bars.  Wooden hatches float, so hatch bars were fastened atop to restrain them.  These were pieces of 3” steel angle bolted at the ends to padeyes attached to the deck.  For the model I used 1/32” square brass wire.  At each tip, I soldered a short piece of I/16” brass tubing.  A #75 hole through the top of the tube will accept the simulated hold down bolt.  A fussy detail requiring a frustrating amount of time.
 
Roger
 

Underhill appears to be doing it the hard way!  Of course he was writing many years ago and new tools and materials have become available since.
 
Unless oyou are planning to put your chain under considerable tension, high temperature silver solder is not necessary.  Lead free solders are now available in a wide range of diameters. I have recently been using .010” diameter solder with good results.  Like Underhill, I like the liquid fluxes applied with a small brush.  They do a good job of drawing solder into the joint.  Finally, I prefer a fine tipped electric soldering iron to a torch.  With the very small sizes involved here an electric soldering iron will fuse the joint instaneously.
 
Roger

@MrBlueJacket Thanks Nic! Here are a few more pics. Sanding of the hull is complete, waste wood from keel has been removed, bowsprit with sheave installed, rudder post installed. Rudder, some of the deck furniture and mast dry fitted. Sometimes I like a preview of the finished product. There's also a close up of the tiller, hand carved. 

Indeed you would think so - however the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) suggest cutting back lightly infected plants, but removing badly infected ones altogether, and sadly burning them to avoid spread. I fear this has been the fate of most with bad blight. There is some English boxwood for sale still, but it's hard to find anything longer than a foot. I have some castello boxwood in my stash, which is a different family altogether. Never used it so don't know how it differs.

Well that was dumb.  I was mounting the island and saw that I had put the wires on the foredeck, rather than aft.  Gotta remove them and do it over.  I've looked at the plans, but my eyes have not been able to make out the actual wire locations.  Makes sense that there would be a riser in the middle to elevate the wires, but I haven't found what that would look like.  The location of the wires, now that I see that they go at "the other end" from where I was fitting them, works a lot better as they are the correct length, now.  But, it looks like one of the provided wires goes over the top of the aft elevator.  I suppose there could have been one there that got broken down when the elevator was in use.  I've inferred the locations of the wires from the location of the round fittings that look like they would have been part of the shock absorbing mechanism and "ears" on the deck surround plates.  Never been on a carrier, so I have no experience of the mechanisms--just what I think would have been required while thinking as an engineer.

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your appreciation !
 
**********************************************************

Installing the ship’s boats 3
 
The installation was movd further to completion by tidying up the loose ends and producing the bunts for runners of the boat tackles. The runners are about five times the distance between the head of the davits and the waterline long, plus some extra for handling. However, as the rope is slightly overscale the runners were cut a bit on the short side in order to make the bunts not too bulky. The actual runners were cut above the cleats and the bunts were formed over two clothes pins driven into a piece of wood and have a loop pulled out with which they can be hung over their respective cleat. 

Note that the runners for the ‘ready’ boat are not arranged in bunts but in coils, ready to be thrown loose so as to allow the boat being lowered quickly e.g. in a case of man-over-board.

Again, working from the inside out, the next items to go on were the stays for the davits. Luckily, the stays are drawn in the lithographs so that their points of fixation are known. I had to deviate a bit from those drawings, as they pertain to the longer, turning davits for the boats stored on rack, which belong to a slightly later period. The stays are supposed to keep the davits aligned, rather than helping to swing them around.
 
It was a bit of a trial-and-error procedure, before I came up with a protocol for making miniature fake chains of exactly the right length and with loops at both ends. The chains would have been shackled into ring-bolts at the head of the davit. No way of making shackles in this scale, so I just tied the fake chains to ring-bolts with fly-tying thread.

Some people may think now that’s it, but in fact there still is quite a long to-do list for little details:
 
- davit for the stern-anchor
- flag-poles and flags
- for the gun: tampon, wiper, rammer, and two gun-sights
- and the … crew!
 
To be continued ....
 

Definitely not splitting hairs, apples and oranges!  Allan refers to sailing warships of the 17th and 18th Centuries.  These vessels had large permanent lanterns affixed to the transom; one to three depending on the status of the ship.  Samual Pepys bragged that one on the Royal Sovereign was large enough that he kissed a woman while standing inside of it!  The main purpose of these lanterns was to allow formation station keeping at night.
 
Much later in the Nineteenth Century, maritime nations developed “Rules of the Road” in an attempt to eliminate collisions at sea.  These would not work at night if the vessel’s could not see each other.  This lead to the legal requirement for vessels to carry navigation lights, specifically red (port) and green (starboard).  These would have been attached to the lower mast shrouds on sailing ships.  Exactly when did this happen?  I don’t know.
 
Roger

Andy, really nice work.
 
In the years before Covid, my wife and I went on three Sisley Garden Tours to different areas of rural England; a wonderful experience.  We heard from more than one gardener maintaining these magnificent gardens that there is an Asiatic blight killing the  Boxwood Trees.  It would seem that someone could scavage some nice Boxwood before it’s too late.
 
Roger

Definitely not splitting hairs, apples and oranges!  Allan refers to sailing warships of the 17th and 18th Centuries.  These vessels had large permanent lanterns affixed to the transom; one to three depending on the status of the ship.  Samual Pepys bragged that one on the Royal Sovereign was large enough that he kissed a woman while standing inside of it!  The main purpose of these lanterns was to allow formation station keeping at night.
 
Much later in the Nineteenth Century, maritime nations developed “Rules of the Road” in an attempt to eliminate collisions at sea.  These would not work at night if the vessel’s could not see each other.  This lead to the legal requirement for vessels to carry navigation lights, specifically red (port) and green (starboard).  These would have been attached to the lower mast shrouds on sailing ships.  Exactly when did this happen?  I don’t know.
 
Roger

Andy, really nice work.
 
In the years before Covid, my wife and I went on three Sisley Garden Tours to different areas of rural England; a wonderful experience.  We heard from more than one gardener maintaining these magnificent gardens that there is an Asiatic blight killing the  Boxwood Trees.  It would seem that someone could scavage some nice Boxwood before it’s too late.
 
Roger

I'm not a modeler but I do a lot of small precise wood working.  I've had a Byrnes saw  and thickness sander for about 11 years now and was just going to order another saw when I read the news. I have most of the attachments / blades and have shop built a few others. It's a pretty wonderful piece of equipment but I wouldn't say it's for everyone.  The tilt table in particular still gives me the creeps everytime I use it. 
 
I initially bought a Proxxon for evaluation but ended up sending it back. I still wrestle with getting one for the tilt arbor.  It was a nice saw and got rave reviews from friends doing similar work. But I found I would need to discard the warranty and make a few mods to get a new saw to where I needed it.  The Brynes saw was there right out of the box and it didn't cost significantly more  than the Proxxon. It's not perfect but it fits my shop..The micro adjustable fence is solid and I made stops so I can dado easily. My wish list would be for a tilt arbor and a true sliding table.  
 

Definitely not splitting hairs, apples and oranges!  Allan refers to sailing warships of the 17th and 18th Centuries.  These vessels had large permanent lanterns affixed to the transom; one to three depending on the status of the ship.  Samual Pepys bragged that one on the Royal Sovereign was large enough that he kissed a woman while standing inside of it!  The main purpose of these lanterns was to allow formation station keeping at night.
 
Much later in the Nineteenth Century, maritime nations developed “Rules of the Road” in an attempt to eliminate collisions at sea.  These would not work at night if the vessel’s could not see each other.  This lead to the legal requirement for vessels to carry navigation lights, specifically red (port) and green (starboard).  These would have been attached to the lower mast shrouds on sailing ships.  Exactly when did this happen?  I don’t know.
 
Roger

Paul,  From a Naval Architect’s perspective, you are exactly right.  Determining the waterline at which a vessel will float requires knowing two things:
 
1.  The weight of water displaced with the vessel assumed to be floating at several waterlines shown on the lines drawing.  The results of this calculation can be plotted as a curve displacement vs waterline height.
 
2.  The weight of the ship in different load conditions.
 
With this information, the draft of the vessel can be picked off for any load condition.  In 1800 there were several methods for calculating displacement from the shape of the hull.  These ranged from numerical approximations calculated manually, but based on techniques similar to the computer algorithms used today to actually measuring the quantity of water displayed by immersing a model in a tub of water.
 
The big unknown for ships built in the wooden ship era was the weight of the ship itself.  Shipbuilding management systems were simply not capable of accurately predicting how much of the timber allocated for a particular ship would actually wind up in the finished vessel.  Iron and steel construction would eventually change this.
 
The answer to all of this would come when the vessel was launched, and the draft of the floating vessel known. With this they could pick off the weight in the as launched condition from the curve. Adding  the weight to be added to complete the ship, the armament, stores, etc. they could get a realistic estimate of the draft of the vessel in various loaded conditions.
 
My suggestion:  Coppered vessels- Follow whatever drawings you are using.  Vessels not coppered-  White or back stuff up to the bottom of the Wales.  The stuff was cheap.
 
Roger

Of course, Constitution has had a very long life during which she has been rebuilt and repaired several times.  For a considerable part of this time she sailed as an active unit of the US Navy so until recent times, her refits did not necessarily involve ensuring historical accuracy.  Even today, she is a hodgepodge of different periods.
 
Constitution underwent a major repair in the 1920’s.  There are photos of her during this repair in drydock with all exterior planking removed.  Apparently, during this repair a series of as built drawings were prepared.  In the 1990’s these drawings, on a DVD disc, were offered to the public.  I believe that the drawing that you have posted is one from the 1920’s.  To be useful to the level that you want you would have to be able to determine when different structural elements were added during which historic period.   
 
Roger