Ian_Grant

Hi Bill; in short, yes.  Anderson has some ratios for English and foreign ships at the start of Chapter III.  Bear in mind that when he says a topmast is x/y as long as its lower mast, he means the entire lower mast to the step in the keel. It would be interesting to compare his values to the stock Heller parts.

At any rate, he says fore and main t'gallant masts varied from 0.4 of the topmast, to 0.5, then back to 0.4 from 1620 to 1670 or so; any value in that range should be satisfactory.

Begging your pardon of course, but my thought would be to buy a wheel ... 😉

It may be best to not try to hinge the rudder - instead, have the rudder shaft pass through a brass tube epoxied into the hull and have a way to support the bottom of the rudder: eg a small plate attached to the keel, extending back under the rudder with a hole for the bottom end of the rudder shaft; or make it with a pin which extends up into a hollow rudder shaft.  Just two ideas to inspire thought.......

Looks good. My only comment is that the rudder linkage is much farther out from the centre of the servo arm than from the rudder shaft. The servo will hardly have to move to give rudder hard over, which means it would be very "twitchy" when moving the "stick" on the transmitter. Moving the link towards the servo shaft would give a better feel on the "stick", and give more torque from the servo though more is probably not needed.

Also not sure why the rudder horn holes are oval....🤔

Finally, you would get a smoother action if you employ "quick links" rather than bending the wire.

https://www.greathobbies.com/productinfo/?prod_id=DUB109

Good luck; I'm interested to see how this works...............

Looks good Bruce!  That's one lucky helmsman .... 😁

Looking forward to her shakedown cruise!

John, I am really enjoying your historical analysis and will follow to the end, of course. I hope to start my SR in about two years from now, God willing, and am very interested in where you go from here. Thanks for posting!!

6 hours ago, smileyjon said:

Bending small tubing

Not sure where to post this but could anyone offer advice on bending 3 to perhaps 6mm tubing in brass, plastic or copper . . or other ideas

I will have 3 sail sheets that will go through the deck of a yacht.  These will need to turn through bends (at least 1 will need to go through 2 bends) which in turn to be joined to a 'traveller' line from a 4 turn winch servo.

This is a one-off build so I'm trying to avoid buying equipment I will not need again.

Any thoughts would be very welcome
Many thanks
Jon

Just yesterday in another log someone replied to the same question. His solution is to pass a styrene rod (like Evergreen) through the tube, form the bend during which the styrene prevents kinking, then heat the tube with a propane torch to melt the styrene out. Apparently he does this fairly often.

I would do the heating outside in the fresh air though.

Started production on 42 upper tier oars plus spares. I decided I wanted the blades 1/8" wider and 1/8" longer for good measure. Thinking about modifying the existing oars, I decided it would be easiest to trim their edges back to flat then add u-shaped additional wood, rather than messing around with the glued shaft/blade joints or scarfing new ends on. Further it would add some pizzazz to make the additional wood a contrast to the cherry ie use maple.

Given all this I decided to make the upper oars with the wood contrast too, only in reverse to add yet more pizzazz.

The shafts are 1/2" longer to decrease overlap between the blades from the two tiers.

Here we have the notched shafts and the formed blades. Making oars - deja vu all over again....

Steven, you work so quickly, puts my scratch effort to shame. And your true-to-the-ship framing is wonderful!

There are soldering irons which allow you to set the tip temperature, but they're more expensive.

Glen, I thought the "claw" would be supporting the neck of the bottle anyway?  🤔

This is your best yet ... highly imaginative!!

Bill, she's looking a picture! Nice work!

Great!  I'll keep them in mind from now on, never used them before.

I loved Newby's book. What a life, I could never do it.

Thanks; yes I thought the galley would be an engineering challenge but after completion the novelty would wear off, whereas a square-rigger would be easier to build but constantly challenging to sail. In mainland Europe model square-riggers 2m long are common.

Here is  web site which got me thinking about square-riggers. I'd like to build a 4-mast barque (like Moshulu; did you know she is now a restaurant in Philadelphia?) not a warship. Probably a full-rigged 3-master would be more realistic.

http://www.cocatrez.net/Water/NevilleWadeShips/index.html

It is to dream.....

Geez those are long topmasts!!

Nice, sturdy-looking shaft and prop! Also, I don't see much "serious sanding" for your hull.....😉

I guess another option would be to carry the rudder tube through to the well, then make a tiller like in the plan, and have the rudder servo pull the tiller arm via a string from each side, coming through the walls of the well.  ps I assume the rudder shaft passes through a rudder tube in the hull; does the shaft extend above the waterline? Might be a problem if not.

I could visualize a u-joint fitting on the rudder shaft with its second connector swivelling on a vertical shaft fixed under the well floor and a horn somehow attached to the vertical half of the u-joint. But in your case I don't think you have room for such a u-joint either.

https://www.greathobbies.com/productinfo/?prod_id=DUM2013

There are ball-ish looking connectors for control horns but I've always just used quick-links. I doubt the b"ball" connectors would help in your case.

https://www.greathobbies.com/productinfo/?prod_id=DUB2133

ps I added some pics to my earlier post - forgot them originally!!

Jon,  I see your problem with space for the rudder link. Hmmm,... could you make the well slightly shallower? or move its aft wall forward? Or maybe make it narrower at the aft end to allow for pulleys?

It would be advisable to allow for access to the rudder head for maintenance/repairs. I've seen people add small platforms to allow for this. It depends how committed you are to exact scale appearance.

Yes the sheets should rise from the centreline.

ALERT: I was taking what I guess is a pic of your Bluenose for the Dorade!!!  You must have wondered what I was talking about with flying jibs etc,  HaHa!!

Now I've googled the Dorade and I see the actual rig you discuss above.  Disregard much of what I said earlier. The foot of the jib and the main boom are pretty close to the same length; I would just connect their sheets at the same distance back from the jib-front-corner/boom gooseneck. They could both be driven from the same winch, no issue (assuming the winch has the pull force). You will need some sort of reduction to sheet the whatchmacallit sail at the stern, or a second winch.

30-35 degrees is not very much swing, not really enough to broad-reach at 90 degrees to the wind. Ideally you want to achieve close to 90 degrees in order to run with the wind following.

Re my yacht: Originally I had a small hatch amidships for access. I had to cut a hole in the aft deck to fix the rudder post mounting, and I decided to replace the entire deck and while I was at it make a "cabin" spanning from the old hatch location all the way back to over the rudder. See pics below. Unfortunately when I tried it out I had water coming in around the cabin....deck had "bulwarks" around the opening and the cabin walls fitted around said bulwark. Water was able to rise over the bulwark. Plus my poor "helmsman" ended up in water up to his ***. I needed to rethink the cabin construction but I then became distracted by first a static display build of HMS Victory, and for the last couple of years a Roman galley which rows under RC control (my build log is here on MSW). One day soon I will fix the yacht, but after the galley I want to make, again for RC, a square-rigger of at least 3 masts of which there are many impressive examples in Williams' book.

Old white deck hacked off, and imprived transom.

New melamine deck installed.

The new cabin.

Crash Test helmsman.

This is a wonderful example of scratch building.  Really enjoying following along.

Probably the calcets' contrast will be enhanced when you wipe on some finish....

Great project, Grant! I do recall seeing a build log of Billing AQ years ago where the builder found suitable 1/12 scale figures (which is a common dollhouse scale) to represent Bogart and a seated Hepburn. Hepburn was fantastic but Bogart required some painted stubble to age him a bit. I don't see it here so maybe it was on the old Pete Coleman "Victory" site...... at any rate I look forward to seeing your build and especially how you RC a steam plant.

SEA TRIAL #2 !!!!!

While getting set up for this trial, I noticed my supply to the Arduino was intermittent (thank God for the power indicator LED on the board). Without a USB connection from a laptop, the Arduino gets its power from a 9V battery connected via a jack and the Arduino regulates it down to 5V. Two issues: (1) my 9V battery was giving barely 6.5V so the regulator was close to not being able to work (needs a certain amount of ceiling above 5V at its input), and (2) I forgot to solder one of the connections in the jack (!). So that's why the problem in Trial #1.

This time I simulated the second tier of oars by adding suitably sized slices of pine to the existing oars' blades with rubber bands. I am delighted with the result, she moves much better. I now look forward to making and adding the second tier of oars, finishing up the hull, adding the removable deck, and painting her.

Here's a video of this trial. I remembered this time to try out the various turning features i.e. inside oars stopped, inside oars reversed, depending on how sharply rudder is turned.

Jon,

At least your rig is all fore-and-aft thus you don't have any yards with square sails to worry about controlling.

By "snapped sheet" I just meant when one of your sheet lines to a sail/boom breaks. Which will happen. Rigging these is not just a one-and-done; you need to be able to replace the the sheets.

Here are a few ideas to inspire your own...........

With the rudder axis tilted, the rudder horn swings in a tilted plane, of course perpendicular to the axis. A servo connected to the horn with links running horizontally will not operate smoothly; the servo links should always run in the same plane as the servo arm. You could place the servo tilted to match the rudder axis, but you probably don't have room in your hull since the servo would lie well above the rudder horn. Instead you can switch to flexible links (since you have them on both sides of the horn) as below.  The "pulleys" could even be just a round rod spanning the space. It/they would need to be above the highest point the ends of the rudder horn reach in a hard turn.

Regarding the winches rolling back to their default position, you either have to keep your fingers constantly on the transmitter sticks to hold them in place, or open up your transmitter and remove the associated springs from the gymbals. Opening it may void your warranty. Ask about the springs at the hobby shop where you bought it.

Regarding your need for different amounts of sheet movement for different sails, it is an issue with many models. Some approaches are:

1) Construct a multi-barrel drum with different diameter barrels > different diameters pull different lengths per turn.

2) Use a multi-barrel drum with constant diameter, and employ blocks/pulleys to double or half the pull on a given sheet. This is more or less easily done and is covered by Williams.

3) Use more then one winch, each with whatever barrel diameter is required.

Your boat is a fair size with quite a bit of sail area. I don't know what pull will be required of the sheets or what your winches can pull. Perhaps you'll need two winches. At any rate here is a simple sketch to ponder. Williams highly recommends having a "primary loop" between the winch and a fixed pulley, which will never tangle, as opposed to running sheets direct from winch to sail(s) which can tangle, ie come off the drum, if you happen to try to move it at a moment when the sheets are not taut. Hard to put in words but I hope you see. Also shown in the sketch is how to have one sheet move half the distance of the other. If you attach the main sheet to the main boom at a point twice as far from the main mast as the other sheet attaches to the fore boom from the fore mast, the two booms will swing in unison. This probably means changing the point of attachment to the main boom from the "scale" position, but judging by the photo of the rigged model in your early post it should be pretty close. Of course, you will need room in the hull for the primary loop, whose length "L" must be greater than the travel of your longest-moving sheet, in your case the main sheet.

In summary, attach the jib sheets to the jib sails (they look to have the same length along their bottoms); attach the fore sheet at the same distance with all three joining into one common sheet line; attach the main sheet at twice the distance; rig as in the sketch.

There are also ways to arrange the sheet for a flying jib so it can properly fly to leeward of an overlapping jib no matter which tack - this is covered in Williams and also involves a simple factor-of-two rig.

This is a lot to chew on but it is interesting to work things out to have a successful model. Good luck and I look forward to your progress!

Lastly, here's a photo of a kit I made in the seventies and repainted and refurbished a few years ago (after the old girl sank at the cottage on her first sail in decades. The piece of wood embedding the rudder post detached from the inside of the hull and she went down by the stern. Fortunately I was able to find and recover her by snorkelling out). Much simpler rig than yours but needs a very powerful winch (still using the one from the seventies which has 20 lb pull but it is about the size of three hockey pucks (!!??).

Always interested to see an RC Sail project. I'm curious about the length/beam of this model - I take it she has a white plastic hull judging from your pic?

Again from the pic, the internal hull looks very sub-divided into small compartments. It's not trivial to convert a kit not intended for RC. You'll need more through-deck access than the small cabin shown. Give some thought to replacing snapped sheet lines  - how do you get them in there? One suggestion I have ... if you buy a waterproof winch servo, you could have the drumhead above the deck and do your sheet routing on deck. Sometimes people disguise the drum as a capstan. Perhaps you could conceal it in the cabin.

You mention a lead "sub-keel" by which you mean a fin keel with a bulb on the end, like RC racing yachts? You'll need it to sail in any kind of a wind.

There's a very helpful book about RC Scale Sail, "An Introduction to RC Scale Sailing Models" by Philip Vaughn Williams, which covers sailing problems and solutions, making your sails and rigging, sheeting systems, and ballasting.

By the way, I see you haven't "followed" this your own build log. If you go to the top of your log and click on "Follow" you will get notifications when someone posts a comment.

Bob, the RC is not too difficult. Your motors and ESC should be compatible since you got them from one supplier.

Same for "binding" the transmitter to the receiver. If you have problems, just take the boat to a hobby shop which sells RC and they will be able to quickly assist you. 👍