GAW

Fig-146  In 1869 Wallace & Crawford were issued with Patent 2763 for the invention of “improvements is pumps and mechanism ……….”, further research turned up a copy of the original drawings part of which is shown here.  Basically this consisted of four pumps side by side, and operated by cams in place of a crankshaft.  One needs to understand the problems associated with pumps in general.  What in a petrol engine is the piston, in the pump is a cup with a valve in the centre and has to remain vertical in the cylinder in it’s movement.  In a piston engine with a crank shaft, there is a pivot in the piston so that the connecting rod can move side to side as the crank shafts turns.  This is not possible in a pump as the valve takes the place of the pivot pin in the piston, and several ways were devised in the pumps of the period to maintain the vertical moment of the cup, while allowing the connecting rod to pivot according to the crankshaft. It would appear that there were two aims with the new pump design, the first was to have four pumps in the same space as the two, and find a better way of maintaining the vertical movement of the cup and valve.
In the main draft we have a series of pivoted arms and small cams to lift the cup and valve, but on close examination, they would only work to lift the cup, and I cannot see how it could force the cup back down.

Fig-145 The Bilge Pumps shown here are those of the Star of India, and are typical of all that I have ever seen and photographed, note that the elongated shape of the two pumps is fore and aft, which again is typical of those fitted to the Windjammers of the late 1800s.  Note also that there are just two pistons or rather pumps on a single crankshaft and that probably forged in the blacksmiths shop.  If so made, it would have been very difficult to forge it to take 4 pumps in the restrictive space between the Fife Rails and between the mast and the deck house that is the usual location of the Bilge Pumps.  In later times, the pumps were made as double acting, but at this date I do not think that it was so.
 
The Falls of Clyde was the first of the Falls Line fleet of iron four masted ships and barques built on the Clyde, and this just three years after the very first of the new breed, this being the County of Peebles, so we are in a period of innovation , a new concept of ship design to compete with the ever advancing Steam Ship. So we can expect the pumps to be of advanced design, and indeed they were.  Now began the search, luckily the original costs book for Hull-17 (Falls of Clyde) is still with us, and this lists the Bilge Pumps as manufactured and supplied by R.C. Wallace & Co with an address as Glasgow.  Further research in the Post-Office Annual Glasgow Directory for 1878/79 identified the company with an actual address, yet further research revealed two more companies associated with the pumps R.C.Wallace & Sons, and Wallace and Crawford, in fact the Wallace and the Crawford families were closely involved with each other way back in history, and that his initials R. C. stands for Robert Crawford Wallace. 

Fig-144 A photo showing the same holes in the deck plating of the actual full size Falls of Clyde.  The Bilge Pumps were removed in 1912, when she was fitted out with internal tanks, as a sailing oil tanker, but luckily the deck plates were left intact to indicate the type of pumps originally fitted - There are no photographs of what these original pumps looked like, and until I manages to dig up the original data, with the help of the staff of the University of Glasgow Archive department, no one had any ideas about them, other than they must have been quite unusual.  I have visited almost all of the old Windjammers that still sail the seas, and a lot of those tied up as Museum ships, and in all cases, the elongated holes to take the Bilge Pumps have been positioned fore and aft, and not across the deck.  Thus stated a very interesting search - find and reconstruction - but for next month.

Fig-143 All is now complete excepting for the ships Bilge Pumps. Note the two elongated holes in the deck plating, as an indication of where they will eventually be located.

Fig-142 The completed Midship house in place with Jock the riveter there to check the scale.

November 2018
Fig-141 The midship House frame work of angle iron - brass - is first tinned then located to the individual positions, one at a time, and heated with he carbon rod to melt the soft solder to attached it in place.  Note that paper wrapped around the carbon rod to insulate it from the side of the deck house.  This was a problem in the early stages, as contact with the rod will cause it to heat up and melt anything close by.  But a small sheet of paper rapped around it and held in place with Cellotape was all that was needed to solve the problem.

Fig-140  The completed side panels are here shown being assembled with soft solder to the base plate, after which the frames are added, and soft soldered in place.  This is the midship house which at this period contained the Galley and crews quarters. The Galley was later relocated and a donkey engine and boiler put in it’s place, and is still there to this day.

Fig-139 With the panels assembled to form the four side of the iron box, openings for the relevant doors and port holes were then cut, door frames and doors fitted and port hole frames turned ready for fitting.
 

Fig-138 The next up is the Deck House, basically an iron box, here fabricated in .010 sheet brass - that is 1” thick sheet iron, obviously way out of scale, but more practical to use on this scale for this item.  the sheets are cut to size and provided with rivet heads, these being visible on the inside, which with the top left off, are visible on the model. The mitred joints on the angle brass are silver soldered, while the remaining assembly is soft soldered together.

October 2018
Fig-137  We now have the hull centre section complete with stub masts in place, together with mast fittings and rings of hard wood wedges at the two points of contact with the decks and then the keel base plate

Fig-136  Stub Jigger Mast, with base platform, rings and wedging.  The wedges were about 20 in number, difficult to count with out a good brushing off of the rust flakes - forgot to take a brush with me.  On the model I have made them as box wood rings, and marked off the individual wedges with pencil lines.  In practice you would not see the wedges as they would have been covered with a sail cloth cover,  called a Mast Coat. Note three rings and wedges on the Jigger mast, for the Poop Deck, the Main Deck and the Keelson base.

Fig-135 Base of the Fore Mast on the Falls of Clyde - a rather sorry sight, but with enough parts still recognisable to be able to make a reasonable representation of it on the model.  Basically an iron platform over the Keelson with the side plates straddling four Frames, three visible the fourth under the rubbish on the left.  The base of the mast is sitting in a ring riveted to the base plate, complete with wooden wedging.  I was only able to access the base of the fore and Jigger Masts, the latter being under 3 feet of water at the time, which  just left this one for the detail.

September 2018
Fig-133 There really is no excuse for model makers to get the scale of detail out of proportion on their models, if they can get to an actual ship.  Even with out any regular measuring devise, have your good lady or a regular friend stand by the detail and snap a photos.  I was looking here for the hight of the rings on the mast, but it is good for almost anything.  A foot on a deck plank to the hight of the captains cabin and everything in between,  I have been very lucky to have visited the Falls of Clyde four times, the last time on 2005 then taking over 800 photos.  But most ships of a given period of a similar size will have general gear of similar dimensions.  The next best thing if you cannot get there is to search the internet for photos - almost everything is on the internet- there are thousands of archive photos available at the click of a mouse , showing people on decks of all periods where cameras were available, many group/crew shots, where one can get a general idea of the build of an individual from the others around him and ascertain the hight if this railing or that bollard.

Fig-132 Showing two stub masts, one fitted with the stiffening ribs on the inside.  The angle iron (brass) ribs were only able to be soldered in place at the extreme ends of the Masts, as it was impossible to get the carbon rod very far down the inside of the mast, with out breaking most of the other soft soldered joints, holding it all together.  Which begs the question, of how in 1878, did they riven these plates together, and then rivet the stiffening bars down the inside as well.  I have asked this question around among those of an age and in the service.  One answer I came up with from several quarters, was that they would send a boy - down-the-tube - to assist from the inside.  Although this might conceivably have been possible with the large diameter Masts, it does not answer the same question for the smaller diameter yards, that were also constructed of riveted iron plates.  Perhaps we will never know, as with so many things of by-gone days, now all but forgotten with the passing generations.

Fig-131 - The remaining plates were then assembled in the same way and attached to the first set,  ends cut and trimmed to length - the aluminium rings being used to locate, adjust and fix their positions before the tinning solders were remelted, to complete the joints.

Fig-130  To assemble the parts, the first three rows - nine plates -  were adjusted around the Master Pattern and held in place with the aluminium rings, then heated at strategic spots to melt the tinning solder to hold them in place, sufficient to withdraw the aluminium Pattern, after which further heating with the resistance soldering unit was sufficient to completed the exercise.

Fig-129 We now come to the masts, in this case just stump masts, as I wished to show the three angle iron ribs on the inside.  Each is made up of a stepped series of three iron plate circling the mast and riveted together with a double rows of rivets, with the stiffening angle iron ribs running down the centre of each plate.  All rivets would have been countersunk to maintain a smooth surface to the out side of the masts.  To assist in their construction I machined a length of Aluminium rod to the inside diameter of the Masts, with a slight taper at each end to accomodate it where required, this then forming the Master Pattern.  The final shape and size of each mast being determined by a series of aluminium rings, machined on the inside to match the required out side diameter of that  part of the Mast.  A small block of aluminium was also machined with a groove down the centre, to match the new Master Pattern.  These then formed a male and female die, between which all of the mast plates could now be formed.  Each plate was marked out and cut to size in threes, provided with the double row of rivets down each side, annealed, then cleaned and tinned before being pressed to shape between the pair of Dies.

Fig-128 The main hatch now in place on the centre section of the model,. Later I added a leader down to the Tween Deck and on down into the Main Hold - not sure if it was originally there, but is at least a logical place to locate  one and looks natural.

Fig-127 The angles brackets. rings and fittings are all fabricated from stock brass, and soft soldered in place to complete the single unit.  This was then dropped into the hole between the Frames, from where the original sample came out and soft solider in it’s  final resting place.  Jock the Riveter is useful to have around, to keep the scale of things in view at all times.

Fig-126 The main hatch I originally made up from brass sheet and angle, to the shape and size indicated on the original Ships Plans of 1878  - It was only later that I realised that this was not supposed to be a scale drawing of what was actually fitted, but more a symbolic  indication of the size and the placing of the Hatch.  For actual detail I used photo and data of the hatch as it is today, as I feel that it is most probably the original one.  The rectangle shown here of fine sheet brass, being silver soldered together to form the sides of the new Main Hatch.

Fig-125 The now completed Hull centre section, ready for fitting out, but shown here along side the original Half Model,  with the relevant Half Frames removed.

Fig-124  And yes the Freeing Ports do open with working hinges.

Fig-123  Freeing Port detail, all parts soft soldered with the resistance soldering unit, with the parts tinned first, fluxed, then heated while being held in place, with what ever is handy.

Fig-122 - The Stays, angle iron for the Main Rail and Topgallant Rail are now all soft soldered together and soft soldered to the top of the Garboard Strake, as seen from the inside.

Fig-121 The Bulwark plating and Stays have now been soft solder together, this was spot soldered - for want of a better term - while the Stays were still temporally attached to the Garboard Strake, now they can be more firmly soldered together to form a single unit.