TomShipModel

Excellent work Kevin.
 
Tom

This is the tragic last act of the famed Salem frigate. She held an estimated 5.000 Irish prisoners during her twelve final years, who were mostly awaiting transport to Australia. Some of the prisoners' stories are recounted here:
 
 
 

I'd be interested is how they work.   I've also smoothed out the wrinkles with a weight bristle brush.  On first impression, the sponge may not be stiff enough smooth out the wrinkles.  I think that these are intended to apply glue etc.  If they work for you that's great.
 
Tom
  

Good evening, John,
 
The reduction in the height of the sail depends on how much you wish to furl; meaning completely furled or, as I did, partially lowered.  50% or so worked for the look I was working toward.  If you wanted to lower the gaff more, 25 to 30%.  Just keep in mind that the number of gromets and lacing line around the mast would be the same as for a raised sail.
 
Regarding color, for some reason the brownish gray that I got gave me the look that I wanted.  Rather than dying, some have used acrylics to gt different coloring and effects.
 
I hope that this answers your question.  Happy ship modeling,
 
Tom

Moving on to the jib, we see that it is set flying (that is, it isn't tied to a yard or any standing rigging).  The traveler on the bowsprit will be one connection point and the halyard block another.  Differing from the fore sail, there are two sheet lines on the jib.  The reason is because when changing tacks (moving the sail so that it draws on the opposite side of the boat) the stay prevents a single sheet from being shifted from one side to the other.
 
Because this sail is a flying sail, it is best to start furling it off the model.  Do that by moistening the sail with your wetted brush at the points where the sail is going to bend.  This sail is set by first raising the halyard and then hauling in the outhaul that pulls the traveler out on the bowsprit.  In the opposite direction, on a larger rig, there would be an inhaul to pull the traveler in.  On a small boat, you cast off the outhaul and pull in the sail while letting off on the halyard.  On a larger ship, there is a net to catch the lowered sail.  Not so on the boat.  Lowering the sail without pulling in the traveler would drop the sail in the water (a mini-disaster).  So, lengthen the outhaul.  I cheated and spliced in a segment of line and seized it to the traveler.  You make the splice by open the end of the line to separate strands on both cut ends.  Then apply white glue connect to two ends and twirl the line between your thumb and fore finger.
 
The lowered sail rests on the bowsprit and the thwart.  The last thing to do is to rig the sheet line.  One side gets wrapped around a thwart.  The second sheet wraps around the stem and is then belayed on the thwart on the opposite side.  I wet down the line with dilute white glue, add a little weight with a doll house clothespin pin or two and let the line sag.  I have photos of this below.
 
Once the sail is dry, touch up the shape and hang.  Finally, belay the lines to the thwarts and add rope coils.  I make my coils by wrapping white glue soaked line around an adequately sized dowel on the pushing the formed coil off the dowel before the glue dries.  With rigging line, I only use Cyano to point the line.  Once the line goes through where I need to thread it, the cyano is cut off.  All the line fixing is down with acrylic matt finish or dilute white glue.
 
The furls sails are now done.  I hope that you like the affect.  Try doing it; it is really not that hard to do.

Now we move on to the head sails.  As with the main sail, the head sails will be furled.  So, the sail are will need to be reduced from the full set sail.  The fore sail is attached to the stay.  When furled, it will slide down the stay.  The foot of the sail will be at the level of the top deadeye of the stay.  The sail at half size looks a bit small, but remember that there needs to be a convincing look to the furled sail.  Avoid the temptation to go too long up the stay.  Since the top part of the sail, and the lower section will be a bit unfurled, the full with of the cloth (space between the seems) will be evident.  So, draw these seam lines at the the full width.  The others will show in the folds so spacing isn't much of a concern.
 
The fore sail is attached to the stay in one of two ways.  One way is to lace it with a continuous run line.  Given that this rig is intended to be set up and broken down quickly, I would avoid the continuous lacing.  Unlike the mainsail that would be stored laced to the gaff, the fore sail would not have been attached to the stay when the rig was struck.  So, I attached it using 'hanks'.  A hank looks exactly like a Greek Letter Omega.  It is on top of the stay and the legs are lashed together through a grommet in the sail.  Instead aof a continuous lashing through the grommet, sometimes a loop on each leg were connected by a wooden toggle.  This made attaching these pretty quick.  In the case of the model, I simply ran the line through the sail twice to make a loop, placed the hank on the stay capturing one leg in the loop, and then pulling the loop tight and tying it around the leg on the opposite side.
 
As with the Main sail, drill, don't punch, the grommet holes.  As with the mainsail, you need to have the number of attachment points that you would have with a set sail.  From what I've been able to find, there was one hank for each cloth.  For this sail, that means a total of seven hanks.  The lower cringle is simply laced to the stay in the bite at the top of the deadeye.
 
After the sail is attached to the stay, attach with a bite or seizing a sheet to the other end of the sail.  There is only a single sheet for this sail.  Not so for the jib, but we will cover that later.
 
Finally, the sail halyard block is hooked at the top of the sail.
 
Now furl your sail by wetting it and sliding it down the stay.  You will do this to get it to hang convincingly.  After it dries, you may want to do some touch up shaping.  Do that with your wetted brush.  Note the doll house cloths pin before I reattach the halyard to the mast.

The first photograph shows the lashing to the gaff.  Note the the lashings are vertical.  The tendency to do spiral lashings is not correct.  The second photo shows the lashing to the mast.  Note that it is purposely loosely wrapped arround the mast and that the rope passes through each grommet twice.

Excellent work Kevin.
 
Tom

Hello fine folks.

Im thankful to be here. I used to model many moons ago. Mostly Tugs like the Doris Moran, etc. I only did scratch built. I've never seen a model ship in a package I began ship building  after a foray into building large airplanes from kits. But my family history always takes me back to the sea. They say my family's namesake (last name) [Tench] is a direct line to Teach from genealogy records and statements from generations back. I spent 26 years in Hawaii (Hence the Aloha) and reside about 20 minutes outside Charlotte, N.C.  home of the Tarheels and Hornets nest  for historical references

Thank You for allowing me to be here and contribute and glean from your pages.

I have already seen some impresssive build pictures and Im sure will enjoy many more while I'm here. Thank You so much.

Thanks i got it from Greg this morning.
Best regards
kevin

.

Now that the main sail is lashed to the gaff and to the mast it needs to be shaped as the gaff is lowered.  I covered the boat with a bit of foil to preclude any water dripping into the boat.  They key here is to be slow and deliberate.  You are wetting the sail to shape it, but don't soak it.  As the gaff is lowered, fold the sail gently wetting where you want it to fold.  These are very loose folds (don't crease the sail).  the lowered sail will fold over the boom.  This is how it would be before any gaskets were tied on.  No you need the sail to dry.  Note that I uses the doll house clothes pins and a twist tie to hold it while it dries.
 
After it stiffens up, continue shaping to get a realistic look.  You should also wet the rigging lines that would be sagging in a catenary sag.  Many times water and some clothes pin weight is enough to do this.  Sometimes, brush on some dilute white glue.  Chuck's rope takes well to this treatment.
 

The first photograph shows the lashing to the gaff.  Note the the lashings are vertical.  The tendency to do spiral lashings is not correct.  The second photo shows the lashing to the mast.  Note that it is purposely loosely wrapped arround the mast and that the rope passes through each grommet twice.

Moving on to the jib, we see that it is set flying (that is, it isn't tied to a yard or any standing rigging).  The traveler on the bowsprit will be one connection point and the halyard block another.  Differing from the fore sail, there are two sheet lines on the jib.  The reason is because when changing tacks (moving the sail so that it draws on the opposite side of the boat) the stay prevents a single sheet from being shifted from one side to the other.
 
Because this sail is a flying sail, it is best to start furling it off the model.  Do that by moistening the sail with your wetted brush at the points where the sail is going to bend.  This sail is set by first raising the halyard and then hauling in the outhaul that pulls the traveler out on the bowsprit.  In the opposite direction, on a larger rig, there would be an inhaul to pull the traveler in.  On a small boat, you cast off the outhaul and pull in the sail while letting off on the halyard.  On a larger ship, there is a net to catch the lowered sail.  Not so on the boat.  Lowering the sail without pulling in the traveler would drop the sail in the water (a mini-disaster).  So, lengthen the outhaul.  I cheated and spliced in a segment of line and seized it to the traveler.  You make the splice by open the end of the line to separate strands on both cut ends.  Then apply white glue connect to two ends and twirl the line between your thumb and fore finger.
 
The lowered sail rests on the bowsprit and the thwart.  The last thing to do is to rig the sheet line.  One side gets wrapped around a thwart.  The second sheet wraps around the stem and is then belayed on the thwart on the opposite side.  I wet down the line with dilute white glue, add a little weight with a doll house clothespin pin or two and let the line sag.  I have photos of this below.
 
Once the sail is dry, touch up the shape and hang.  Finally, belay the lines to the thwarts and add rope coils.  I make my coils by wrapping white glue soaked line around an adequately sized dowel on the pushing the formed coil off the dowel before the glue dries.  With rigging line, I only use Cyano to point the line.  Once the line goes through where I need to thread it, the cyano is cut off.  All the line fixing is down with acrylic matt finish or dilute white glue.
 
The furls sails are now done.  I hope that you like the affect.  Try doing it; it is really not that hard to do.

Square tuck
I wanted to give this a try at least once before making use of the laser cut versions. #1. I copied the angle from the laser cut piece onto the joined strips. #2. The frame was made and set parallel with the angled line. #3. The curves were done with the spindle sander and disc sander along with a bit of hand work. #4. Almost ready to place on the ship. I Still needed to taper the frame.
The most difficult part was trying to get symmetry between the two sides. It's not perfect, but certainly close enough. I was kicking myself when I noticed that the top of the port side square tuck is 1/64" lower at the stern post compared to the other one. Of course this won't be seen once the moulding is on. I left the outer area of the frames without any tapering. There is a tiny filler plank that goes between the tuck and the first strake. I will wait until that's on the ship, so I can sand that area all at the same time.
 
Anyway only one shot at it for this result.
Mike

Window sills
I will admit that these were quite tricky to make. Different angles everywhere and some trial and error was needed in order to get them just right. I probably had 3 or 4 throwaways before getting the ones you see here.
 
Stern frames
In order to make these, I sandwiched two roughly cut frames together with some Elmer's School Glue and then adhered the plan drawing for final shaping. This was easy enough to do with the help of the spindle sander, disk sander and scroll saw.
 
Transom
On top of the shear there will be a 5/32" fairing cap and a 1/4" cap rail that sits on top of that. The two pieces will add a total of about 3/32" more height to the top of the shear. I wouldn't want the cap rail to protrude above the top edge of the transom. With that in mind, I decided to fair the quarter deck shear before adding the transom. This way I could check the clearance before adding the transom. It was really just a matter of getting that small triangular piece taken down to the right height while fairing the shear.


I added the 5/32" fairing cap for the quarter deck and faired the outer hull using the cap as a guide.

Mike

I was hoping for a little more progress this week. The problem was that I started nit picking.
 
One of the things that I've been wanting to do from the beginning was to avoid any color matching with paint for areas that might not have turned out as expected. Typically that would be something like an open butt joint or where two different wood types join together thus changing the uniformity of the look.
 
Looking at this closeup photo from my previous post, it's not hard to see that the AYC quarter panel is a lighter color than the end grain of the wing transom which is made from boxwood.

 
The lower section of the quarter panel for the most part is covered by planking. However, some of the lighter AYC color will be seen after the planking is completed. Knowing that, I decided to remove some of the AYC from the quarter piece and replace it with boxwood. Actually, it was quite easy to do and I was able to complete the work in less than an hour. See photo below.
 
Fashion piece
The fashion piece was cut from 5/32" sheet. The tricky part was getting a nice flow into the bearding line and a good joint along the deadwood and wing transom. I ended up having to make two of these in order to get the one I liked. I left the top of the fashion piece standing proud. Also, I left some of the paper template attached which could be used as a sanding template. I recommend doing this rather than trying to get a perfect fit everywhere. It's hard to explain as to why, just that it's easier to fit the piece and fair the top into the wing transom afterwards. If I end up back into nit picking mode, I might do a bit more work at the bearding line transition.
 
Also, note that the boxwood filler is in and mostly faired.

Mike
 
 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
 
I'm finally over a bad cold which prevented me from fairing those aft cant frames sooner. With so much wood to remove, I decided to stay with the adhesive backed 80 grit sandpaper until final cleanup. No doubt AYC would have been much easier to deal with than boxwood. Still, no complaints!


Mike

Cant frames (aft)
Framing continues with the install of aft cant #24. This is basically a repeat of what was done with the fore cants. Just less work overall. Anyway, here you go.



Mike

Very precise and clean, as per usual.  Great workmanship.
 
Tom

I'm not sure that you will be able to download the pdf, so here is a photo of the lashing to the gaff.

The first photo shows the template for the jib, and all four plies of silk span.
 
The next photo shows the wetting down process.  First, spread out the piece of silk span that has the on which you traced the dashed lines.  Liberally wet the sail and with your fingers, smooth out any air pockets.
 
Next, overlay the second piece of lined silk span and align the outside lines.  Note that the wet silk span will stretch a bit.  Smooth it down and brush on more mixture.
 
Now, gently peal the wet silk span from the glass.  Spread out a blank sheet and wet it down.  Add the two center sheets on the wet out side sheet.  The third phot shows the center sheets on the right, and the first outside sheet on the left.
 
Finally, lay down the last sheet, spread out the last sheet, wet it, and smooth it out.  Be certain that the outside sheets have an overlap all around the center lined sheets.
 
Last, peal the silk span sail from the glass and hang it up to dry.  I use doll house clothes pins with this jig that I assembled from scrap wood.  Directions for the jig are in the Nautical Research Journal.
 
  

In this installment, I will describe how to make the sails themselves.
 
For this particular model, the sail plan that is available as a download from Syren is the place to start.  It is noted that this boat has the same sail plan and rig as a Gaff rig Cutter (same as Cheerful) except that the lines are smaller and there are certain accommodations so that the rig and sails can be set up, or broken down, readily. 
 
The first photograph is of all three sails (main, fore stay sail, and jib) cut from the downloaded plan.  Some observations are;
 
The main sail is gaff rigged.  That means that it is attached to the gaff.  It is also laced to the mast.  More about that latter.
 
The fore stay sail is attached to the stay (hence "stay sail").
 
The jib is completely set flying (flying jib) meaning that the uphaul raises the peak of the sail and the traveler spreads the sail along the bowsprit.
 
I will show one sail being fabricated.  The others are generally assembled the same way except that the sizes, shapes, and details of reinforcing or reef bands are different.  I'll explain that as we move along.
 
 

Sails were made, in this period, of strips of duck called 'cloths'.  The cloths were 18 to 20" wide and had a 2" overlapping seam.  In most of the smaller scales 1:48 and smaller, the overlap would be very difficult to see.  However, in 1:24, you would see the overlap.  That is one reason why I went to four plies of silk span for this model.  The second was to add a bit more thickness for this very large scale.  Again, at 1:48 and below, I'd stick with 3 plies.
 
There is a sail plan for the Medway Longboat.  Chuck has laid out the cloths very nicely, so you have a bit less work.  However, there are a few decisions that you need to make.  The biggest one, is to set the sails, or to furl them.  I have seen many models with sails, and I have a few opinions.
 
First, set sails, in my opinion, need to be shown drawing.  Frankly, sails that just hang there don't do it for me.  Next, when you do set sails, all of the sails need to be drawing with the wind in the same quarter.  I'm sure that you've seen models with a limp flag or pennant, or one flying opposite to how the sails are drawing.  This, again, in my opinion, spoils an excellent model.  Additionally, too many sails hide quite a bit of detail.  You want to make certain that the sails you set, and those that you furl, represent an actual configuration.  Many models show ever sail set (think of the Revell Constitution).  That happened once; when Constitution was becalmed and searching for any wind.  The fact is that sails can blanket other sails making them inefficient.  So, avoid the temptation of all sails set.
 
Finally, avoiding the 'ghost ship'.  A ship can have two or three figures on it, and it would still be a realistic presentation; i.e. the sails are in their proper configuration and the rest of the crew is below decks.  However, we are putting sails on an open boat.  Would an open boat with no crew have set sails?  Also, if the sails are to be set, the boom would likely be swung out one side or the other.  Given that this model is so light, that would complicate the stand to keep it from capsizing.
 
I made aa main, fore and jib to be set, but I also made a set of sails to be furled.  I went with the furled sails.