qwerty2008

I don't think I have more than $200 invested in her yet.  Her keel was some scrap 3/8" CDX plywood, as were her forms.  Her planking was from some left over white pine 1-by-something "shelving board" my step-dad called it.  The sails were a couple of yards of Supplex for $10-15.  The radio was bought on ebay for about $100 and I have multiple receivers so I can run any one of the three models with the one transmitter.  The servos were the expensive part at about $100 for the set of them.  There's some glue, polyester resin and glass cloth - but no great quantities, and the single gallon of resin has served three models so far.  Paint, but again, not any great quantities.
 
I'm a Scottish Jew, pinching pennies is in my blood. 

I do need to build a pram to chase them around in. 

With the hull glassed, I began to install the deck clamps.  These were of the same pine used to plank the hull, only 3/8" wide and 1/8" thick.  One later was epoxied to the hull.
The placement of the deck beams was determined based oh hatch locations, mast partners, etc.
While my friend Mark was building his skiff outside the shop, I put some of his leftover epoxy into the bilge of Pride's hull to fill crevasses, seal, and strengthen the garboard area.
   
 
There are things that should be done to the keel while it's still just a flat piece of wood, and before it's a permanent part of the hull.  Cutting the cut-out for the propeller is one such thing.

 
I wasn't sure how I was going to attach the external ballast until I saw some Newfie schooner models as big as Pride that used a simple fin with about 15-20 pounds of lead in a bulb.  Going with the idea, I started building a dagger-board box for the fin to slip in to.  The sides are 3/16 luan plywood, glassed on the inside faces, with a pine separator epoxied on fore and aft.
The remaining portion of the aluminum sheet I cut Constellation's yard trusses from will be the fin.
 
 
This oscillating tool I got from Harbor Freight for $10 made quick work of cutting the hole for the trunk to fit in to.  This, of course, is another thing that should be done to the keel before it's part of the hull.
 
 
Portions of the form at that station became internal braces for the dagger-board trunk.  They would be epoxied in.

 
The trunk was itself epoxied in.  After sanding, some glass cloth was laid over it to fair it into the hull and the keel.  Anything not covered with cloth was painted with resin.

 
The trunk got a cap from a bit of cherry I had around and a motor mount was fashioned from one of the forms.

 
A hole was drilled at the center of the trunk along the keel and a brass tube was epoxied into it.  When it set, I cut the tub flush inside and outside.  A matching hole was drilled in the fin, where a brass machine screw and nut would hold the fin to the boat.  The tube protects and seals the end grain of the trunks plywood where the screw will go through.
 
 
I began to fit the deck beams, but these seem thicker than they need to be.  They're like this on Constellation, but there's a lot more head-room inside Constellation compared to Pride where space is at a premium.

Fortunately when I got the plans from Gilmer, I got the full set with structural details,  especially a cross section of the structure; because it's not at all easy to tell where the top of the deck is.  This apparently was a problem found by some company doing flooding analysis on her, they were given a profile and not knowing where the deck was, calculated to the top of the rail.
 
As it is, the top of the deck is level with the top of the wale, which was the next piece to be installed.

 
I had a length of screen molding we used as a batten, or spline, when laying out Mark's skiff on the plywood.  It was precisely the width of the model's wales.
 
 
With the wales on, the prop notch cut, and the dagger board trunk installed, hull was ready to get some paint.
First, a coat of primer.

 
Then I found some spray paint that pretty closely matched the color of Pride's bottom paint
 
 
I thought I had a picture of Pride out of the water where the color of her bottom could be seen, but nearly all my shots of her hauled out are black & white newspaper photos.  This image is from 1980 and you can see a little of her bottom color.

 
I hand painted some flat black above the waterline.

 
The wale widens forward at the hawse pipes, this was installed next, but I'm not drilling the hawse holes yet.
 
 
Again, referring to the cross-section, the top of the deck extends to the top of the wale.  This is capped with a waterway log, which itself has a cap.  There's light planking above this to the cap rail.  The portion of the waterway cap that's exposed outboard forms something of a channel down the boat's side, and this part of the cap is painted red.

 
I cut some 1/16" square strips and sanded them 1/2 round.  This was applied to the outside of the hull to represent the outboard portion of the waterway cap rail.

 
At the top of this channel between the wale and the waterway cap, snugged up under the cap are the channels.  This were more white pine, thicker at the hull and tapered to about half their thickness outboard.  One was installed.  Looking back, I'm not sure why I only did one, but

 
Some black paint touched up the faux waterway rail and the channel below it.  Then put a coat of white on the bulwarks, and cut the gunports.
 
 
The wing transoms and fashion pieces were fabricated and installed, and the facny piece and moldings on the transom..
 
 
Something didn't look right with the deck clamp, and upon investigation, I found it was off at the bow and stern.  It was too well attached to just detach and move, so I pulled it out completely.  Had I installed the wale first, I could have more accurately gauged where to install the deck clamp (minus the thickness of the plywood sub-deck and decking).
 
Finding a small container of red paint turned out to be a challenge.  I wound up with a $2 can of spray paint and proceeded to paint the waterway cap.
 
 
Finally, the rest of the channels were installed.

 
And everything painted
 

The building board that Constellation had been attached to since 1999 and the Pride of Baltimore was built on, was showing it's age.  It had it chips and dings repaired, holes filled, was sanded, and given a couple of coats of flat white paint.  It was then marked with a center-line and lines for each of Macedonian's stations.

 
Each plywood form was attached to a strip of wood to allow it to be stood up and attached to the build board at it's station line.

 
It wasn't really clear to me how the stern came together based on the drawing, but studying several of the fully framed models here on MSW helped me figure it out, and how to deal with it in my particular, and peculiar construction method.  Forms were devised for the construction of the stern and the aft perpendicular form was discarded.
 
 
A keelson was cut from 1/4" plywood and corresponding notches were cut in each form to receive it.  It isn't glued or fastened to any of the forms as it will become part of the model where the forms will be removed.

 
The edge of the forms are taped to prevent the planking from being glued to them, and a batten was nailed to the lower diagonal to steady everything.  Planking then began with 1/8" x 3/8" pine strips starting at the sheer strake.  I used 3/8" common nails to hold things in place.  I used smaller nails on Pride of Baltimore that were almost like straight-pins, but these bent so easily they became quite frustrating.  The next strake was glued to the sheer strake, and pinned and clamped in place.  This, basically, is how all the planking was installed; each strake glued to it's predecessor and finally to the keelson, stem, sternpost, and counter forming a wooden shell of a hull.

 
 

I framed in the main hatch and reinforced around the mast with some scrap plywood then I lowered the whole deck 1/4 of an inch this caused some problems with the chase ports (I knew that I should have waited) so I reshaped the stern to cover up my mistake. I also made a mockup stern lantern (probably a little too small)  to see what it would look like.

The lady I'm with comes from the land-locked country of Oklahoma, and doesn't really get things maritime.  I did have to take up square-dancing though, but then those are the sacrifices we make for our hobby.
 
I wanted to do the Baltimore Clipper in 1:36, but there just wasn't enough room in the hull for the controls, or much else, so I went with 1:20 scale, which makes the overall model about the same size as Constellation and Macedonian.  This is about as large a model as will fit in a van or SUV with the rig lowered, though I hope to eventually make a trailer for them so I can keep them fully rigged in transport.

I first set foot on board the Constitution when I was 7 years old, and I was hooked on sailing ships ever since.  My elementary school library had C S Forester's The Captain From Connecticut which I loved and led me to Forester's other work, namely Hornblower.  In fact, the 16 foot daysailer I've had since 1979 is named Lydia.  I spent my teens and twenties working under sail and power, from barkentines to tugs.
 
I've built several of the 1:96 scale Constitution/United States Revell kits, two of them were RCed; but I always wanted a sailing model of the ubiquitous British frigate, and no one made that kit.
 
I finally decided to build one.  Already deep into building an 1850's American sloop-of-war, and with a Baltimore Clipper schooner already planked up, I began a third model of the HMS Macedonian.  I chose Macedonian because I could easily get Chapelle's drawing of her from The American Sailing Navy from the Smithsonian, and she was interesting.
 
  Macedonian by Gardner
 
Macedonian was a Lively class frigate rated at 38 guns, another of Sir William Rule's designs.  Launched in 1810, during the War of 1812 she had the misfortune to meet the American frigate United States, a Constitution class 44 and was captured.  She was taken into the American Navy and served until 1828 when she was broken up and replaced by a new ship.
 
Lively     Bacchante
 
The story of Macedonian is well told in  Chronicles of the Frigate Macedonian, 1809-1922 by James T deKay  and I've posted a fair history of the ship on my page

 
There's lots of data available on how the British built and out-fitted their frigates, and even Macedonian's figurehead still exists, but I never have found any reliable information on what her stern looked like.

 
What I've come up with is my own conjecture based on the sterns of other Lively class frigates.  The mounted figure is from a statue of Alexander that existed when Macedonian was built.  The round object is the "Vergina Sun" found at ancient Macedonian sites and dating from the time of Alexander's father.  Symbology available when Macedonian was built and while this is my own guess, it's at least a logical guess.  I considered using Alexander's profile from a coin in place of the mounted figure, but his face is already on the bow - given the choice, I'd think an English builder would choose the horse. 

 
When the drawings came in from the Smithsonian, the first thing I did was have them digitally scanned.  I then rescaled them from 1:48 up to 1:36 mostly so this model would be the same scale as my Constellation.  That done, I made up a sheet with each station drawn full-sized, and printed that on my plotter.

 
At this scale, the model should be;
Length: 59" taffrail to Alexander's nose
Beam molded: 13.3"
Draught: 6.87" without the removable ballast keel
Her length over the rig will be about 7'
and she will stand from keel to truck, about 4'.
(I'll update this with more accurate numbers and metric equivalents at a later date)

 
These paper patterns were used to rough cut the wooden stations from 3/8" plywood.  Each paper pattern was then glued onto it's station
 
 
close cut on the bandsaw, and then fined up on the beltsander where some bevel was put into the forward and after stations.
 
 

I added the wales and cut two chase ports in the stern (the gunport lids are temperarily hinged with some tape) I also temporarily attached the stern davits.







 
Lextin.

I have coated the inside of the hull in fiberglass resin thinned with acetone and test fitted a strip of wood to build up the inside of the bulwarks.



 
Lextin.

To determine the size of the ship I traced the bottle and freehand drew the ship into the bottles outline. Then I traced the hull from that drawing onto tracing paper. I repeated that step three times trying to adjust for the perspective view in the original print AND have a hull  that looked like a plausible ship. usually I do the scaling and drawing in photoshop on the computer, but then again usually I already have a nice plan to work from whereas in this case I had to make my own. So then I drew in a rig, omitting the t'galants as I had imagined I would.  If I had included the loftier spars the entire ship would have been scaled that much smaller, and I want the ship to take up as much interior volume of the bottle as possible. Note that in my tracing paper sketch I drew a circle representing the diameter of the inside of the neck of the bottle- this dimension should NEVER be far from your mind when you are laying out a bottle model!
Next I got a chunk of basswood out and carved away at it with an x-acto. After a few passes I plugged in The Jersey Heartbreaker, chucked in a sanding drum, and took it down to the shape you see here. It will next get some more sanding and  grinding around the stern and the deck will get taken down a bit too. But at this stage I was happy to see that I have a hull size I can live with and that it fits into the bottle.

Thank you for the information now I can picture the Polycrest as I read the book.
 
Lextin.

Lextin,
 
This link might shed light on what you seek:  http://www.ctbasses.com/misc/BruceTrinque/    :)  
 
There's a list here, but no pictures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Aubrey

Polychrest is very similar to the two Dart-class sloops, Dart and Arrow. More information here:
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Polychrest
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Arrow_(1796)
 
Here's an oil painting by Francis Sartorius, dated 1805, of Arrow and Acheron in action against the French frigates Hortense and Incorruptible, 4 February 1805, from the NMM collection.
 

 
And a close-up of Arrow.
 

 
NMM also has the original plans for Arrow and Dart: http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections.html#!csearch;authority=subject-90660;collectionReference=subject-90660;innerSearchTerm=arrow+1796

Hey I got a day off today....
 
Hi Qwerty,
    The Minnow! Wow that is back in my day when I was a kid. So young man like you knows the Minnow. I do have plans on that one too.
    But have you ever heard or seen the Vrolijkhied??? It's from the movie "Father Goose"....Now you other guys John, mark, John, and Bob you have to know. !964 staring Gary Grant and Leslie Caron. When I first saw the movie .....OH BOY DID LASLIE CARON STIR MY BLOOD A BIT. But I was lucky to get passed that and noticed the lovely cruiser in the movie. That will the next r/c build.
 
But when I'm away on the job I still will be research my Rattlesnake cross section I will be doing. I want it highly detailed so since a cross section and detailed 1/32 sounds about right and I will give it to one of my kids or a museum if nobody wants it. Because I like building but do you notice you hardly ever pay attention to them once they are just sitting there....haha!!!
 
But back to the orca. should add updates at the end of the month.................Later my buddies
 
OOOPS FORGOT THE PICTURE.....THE VROLIJKHIED
 

This morning I ventured into the shipyard (garage) and tackled the net cutters on the trim vanes.  I also cemented the paper covering on the vanes.
I used "Liquitex" glazing medium for the glue and semi finish.  This stuff is used by artists when painting pictures with acrylic paint.  I don't use the stuff for my paintings, I like the good old oil paints or watercolors.  Although acrylic paints have their place in the art world.
 
In any case, when fully set I can lightly sand it to smooth out the brush marks and dull it some.  In this case it really doesn't matter because the boat will be painted anyway in the colors when placed into service by the K M (Koninklijke Marine, Royal Navy) in 1939.
 
The one vane actuator on the port side needs a "repair,"  the hinge pin hole is a tad too large.  I need to plug the hole and re-drill it.  No biggie.  I'm glad it works and looking okay
 
So, now the boat has some teeth 
 

As you can see I used brass shim to make the teeth.  It's made in two parts, one strip with the width of the vane and curved to match.  The teeth part is also made from the same shim stock with a "foot" bend at 90 degrees and the teeth cut into the other part.  It was then soldered to the base strip and final fit to the leading edge of the vane.
The teeth assy was glued to the vane with CA glue.
 
Cheers,

If I ever built the Orca I would be to tempted to change it to the minnow from Gilligan's island.

If I ever built the Orca I would be to tempted to change it to the minnow from Gilligan's island.

Inspired by a large RC model of the Rattlesnake featured in an issue of Model Ship Builder magazine, I looked around for a subject to built and decided to built the ship in my own back yard, the sloop of war Constellation tied up in Baltimore's Inner Harbor since the mid 1950's.
 

 
Some video of Rattlesnake
 
 
Constellation was a sloop-of-war, of 22 guns, designed by John Lenthal, and built in 1854 by Gosport Navy Yard at Norfolk, Virginia; the last US warship designed and built to operate under sail alone. For a long time she was believed by many to be the old frigate of 1797, rebuilt and moderized, and that debate has raged in the maritime history community for decades.
 
Her lines and sail plan were acquired from the National Archives where I got to handle the actual hand drawn documents.  I decided to build her as she appeared in a portrait by deSimone when she was in Naples in 1856 and still a new ship.
 

 
Her lines were drawn in 1:36 scale, which was perfect, giving a model:
Beam: 13-5/8" (34.713 cm) Length over the rig: 96" (243.84 cm) Width over the rig: 36" (91.44 cm) ~ Main yard w/o stuns'l booms. Length on deck: 61" (154.94 cm) Length between perpendiculars: 59-1/8" (150.178 cm) Draft, without ballast keel: 7" (17.78 cm) With 3-1/2" ballast keel: 10-1/2" (27.94 cm) Height bottom of keel to main truck, without ballast keel: 65" (165.1 cm) With ballast keel: 69" (175.26 cm) Sail Area: 2,807.01 square inches in 17 sails (19.5 sf, 18,109.7 scm, 1.8 sqm)
 
This log will cover my work on this model since it began in 1999 up to where it is now.
 
Author's Note:  This is a log of how I am building this model, not a guide to how a model such as this ought to be built.  It's full of fits and starts, changes of mind, errors, re-do's, more error's, a few mistakes; and somehow, despite all this, it seems to be becoming a working, sailing model that actually looks something like it's namesake.  The director of the actual ship recognized it on first sight - I take that as a good sign!
If you're considering taking on a project like this, please, please, don't let this build log deter you - it's not nearly as difficult as I make it seem.  Just take away from it that which helps you along, and ignore the rest.
 

Much more regarding the details of why I chose this ship to build; history of the ship; and other items of interest can be found on my web page for this project.  This "log" is to replace the one that had been posted here before the forum crashed and lost a lot of data.
 
Beginning
 
Having the plans already in the size I wanted saved a lot of time getting started, and I used the Model Ship Builder article as a guide at first.  A bit of scrap particle board from a remodeling project was used as a building board.  The forms were cut from scrap wood paneling, and the keel was some 1/2" scrap birch plywood from a cabinet I built.  This was all stood up by the end of March, 1999.
 
 
Then I discovered a book;
William Mowll's Building a Working Model Warship:HMS Warrior, 1860.

Mowll covered his forms with battens instead of planking and covered that with gummed brown paper packing tape over which he applied masking tape to create a plug for making a fiberglass mold. The masking tape was to give the texture of Warrior’s cast iron plating. I happened to have a large roll of the brown tape, and got the idea of using this method to make a plug and cast 3 hulls in glass fiber.  I didn't need the masking tape as Constellation wasn't iron plated, I would use the brown tape to impart planking details to the mold.

 
So, moving forward with this plan, I battened the forms with scrap white pine strips...
 
 
 
...and proceeded to cover that with the brown paper tape creating what would be a plug for a fiber-glass mold.
 
 
The tape shrinks a bit when it dries and can be sanded.  Once the form was covered diagonally I began applying a second layer in the form of strips to represent planking, gunport lids, and even copper bottom plating - all this detail would be picked up by the mold and imparted to the glass hull when it was laid up.  The plug still needed more details, like quarter galleries, but none of the drawings available gave these details, so I had to go digging.

 
In the meantime we sold the house and bought a small farm where we kept some horses and I commuted 65 miles one-way to work.  The plug went into the barn, covered in plastic, and wasn't touched from 2003 till 2008.

 
Next: Work resumes.

Work Resumes
 
So, life went and changed things around a bit.  My wife and I went different ways and the farm was sold.  I moved into an apartment and the workshop and the plug went into storage.  In the late spring of 2008 I bought a house with a 12 x 29 shed that became my workshop, subsequently known as "The Damn Yankee Workshop."
 
 
With the shop set up, I began to work on the plug in earnest.  Those details needed for the mold still had to be added and the quarter galleries were a big part of that, so that's where I started.

 
These things didn't need to be very structural as the entire plug would be destroyed in removing it from the mold.
 
In the mean time I visited the restored vessel and learned some things.  The bulwark on the spar deck was actually planked up hammock stanchions.  When the ship was being "restored" as a frigate, they took off the hammock irons and tossed them into the bilges, the restoration recovered all but one and reinstalled them.
 
 
This changed the shape of the hull for me.  Instead of "solid" bulwarks continuing smoothly up to the cap rail, the hull stopped with a cap on top of the waterways, and had these stanchions mounted on top of that cap and covered with wainscoting.  So, I cut the plug down to the lower level at the top of the waterways.

 
The whole idea of the plug being destroyed when the mold was made began to nag at me.  There was a chance, a very good chance in my opinion, that the mold might not turn out and the whole thing would be a disaster and a major waste of time and effort.
 
Next: A Course Change

While I considered what to do about the plug, I found some very nice white cedar while getting something else at the lumber yard, so I began making the lower masts.
Since I had no plans for Constellation's spars specifically, I used several sources for the details, including Spars and Rigging From Nautical Routine, 1849 and Biddlecomb's Art of Rigging, but the best source I found for this 1850's warship was Luce's Textbook of Seamanship which has some very detailed drawings of the rigging of this period.
 
After drawing the spars full-scale, I cut the cedar to the rough dimensions on a table saw:
 
 
I then marked out the details and the taper:
 
 
Shaved the taper, then marked the spar to make it 8-sided:
 
 
The masts were banded with the same brown paper tape the plug was made from, the hounds and the front fish were made and attached:
 
 
The cross-trees and trestle-trees for the lower tops were made along with a rough set of mast caps:
 
 
The topmasts were made from the same cedar and in the same manner as the lower masts.  Some temporary mast steps were placed inside the plug, a stand made from 3/8" plywood to hold the model up, and some paint went on the lower masts.

 
By this time I was convinced that glassing the plug and making it the model's hull was the best course to take...
 
Next: Prepping to glass

Prepping to Glass - or how not to build a hull.
April 2009
 
The plug, now "the hull." needed to be prepped in order to be glassed.  The card-stock quarter galleries were tossed; the stem knee shaped and tapered; and some of the brown paper detailing removed.  The sheer was trued-up and every thing was lightly sanded.
 
 
I used the polyester resin available at the local hardware superstore, and laid up one half at a time with 4oz cloth.
 
 
After one side set-up, it was trimmed and the other side laid up.  The next day that was trimmed, the whole hull sanded, and another coat of resin rolled on:
 
 
Once that was set and sanded all the forms were carefully removed.  The hull was flimsy with only the battens, paper tape, and some very fine glass cloth:
 
 
Glass matting was laid in, one side at a time.  Extra resin was poured in while the hull laid on it's side, to try and fill the spaces between the battens.  This probably would have been better done with Water Putty, or some other filler that would have filled the space more solidly:
 
 
I now had a solid fiberglass hull as the matting made it very rigid.
 
This is NOT a good way to make a hull for an RC boat.  The original plan, before I was distracted by Mowill's book, was the way I should have gone from the start; wood planking on forms, covered with glass and resined inside.  If you're following this with the idea of doing one yourself, learn from my mistakes - look at how I built the hull for my Macedonian.
 
Next: Deck Framing

I use whatever glue that I would use on a static model but I make sure that I coat the entire hull in fiberglass resin to seal it.
Also the bigger the model the easier to RC. I built the HMS Sovereign of the Seas in 1/100 scale now I Know that was way to small hence why I stopped working on it and started on the much larger 1/20 scale Byzantium.
 
Lextin.

Rigging is coming together.  Heres a couple shots.