Ian_Grant

Thanks Kevin. My goal is to sail (row?) her in the local RC boat club's February evening at a local pool. 🙃 Possibly of interest to you, my brother just bought a Creality resin printer, and washing machine, in a "Black Friday" sale (you may never have heard of it; it was an annual fall thing in the States which has spread to here). Just $120CDN for the printer! He says he has my crew in mind for it. 😊

I finally attached the steering platforms after adding most of the exterior trim. Now it's back to the library to laser etch some ply for the fore and stern decks; after adding them I can skin the inside of the fore and stern bulwarks and add the cap rails. I will probably need to add the rudder servo and links before the stern deck decreases access. Pics: Clamping a piece of stern trim. I cheated by cutting the arc from a sheet instead of edge-bending. The bow. The little panels below the (absent) cap rail will be blue with red framing. I left out a couple of forward panels for now; thinking of somehow making or finding a decorative element for there. I drew a little signum in 3dCAD but not sure if it would print, or even if it's appropriate for a ship as opposed to an infantry formation. Maybe a cut-up 3D printed eagle on stempost, with wings extending back into these spaces???? Still pondering. The painted eyes will be in the space at stempost below the trim. Outrigger trim. The little verticals defining sets of three ports were planned originally. The laser etcher could not do the outrigger tops in one long piece; I needed to add a plank to cover the seam so I placed the seam at one of the verticals and added more planks across the outrigger top to match the others. "Make a bug into a feature". Despite what I said earlier I safely cut the trim from wood on my Unisaw by making an auxiliary zero-clearance plate and fence. Port steering platform. They could stand to be 1/4" narrower aesthetically but I figure I need the width to place the rudder shaft outboard enough for the exaggerated oversized rudder to clear the hull, and for the rudder horn to swing. The stern inboard half of the platform will have a shaped block reaching the cap rail level, containing a brass tube for the rudder shaft. This gives me about 2" of "sleeve bearing" for about 6-1/2" of rudder and shaft below the platform. Hoping it won't bind. The horn will be beneath the steering platform deck, concealed from the side by the steering platform's walls which extend below the deck. The stern. There will be one more trim piece, starting at the steering platform at "half bulwark" height and again sweeping up to the cap rail at the sternpost. I must say this part has been fun compared to endlessly tinkering with the oar mechanisms. Still don't know what kind of paint to use. Can't see myself masking and remasking to spray all those little panels, and wales etc. One hobby shop said use whatever paint I like so long as I apply a compatible UV clear-coat on top ......

Nice job so far. Your workbench looks like mine .... 😉

I recall standing at the foot of Cutty Sark's foremast looking up along the mainstay. It was a curve, tight I grant you.

Oh Bill, just leave well enough alone! Your stays look great, job well done! On to the next task......👍

Not an expert, but any given rope or wire stay with say nothing attached along its length will sag in a catenary curve. No real stay on a real ship is a straight line. These old-time ships with braces attached far from the ends of the stay would have to result in distortion of the stay; having the stay remain undisturbed would require the stay's tension force to hugely exceed the sideways pull exerted by the brace if the sail is drawing. I'm trying to think of an analogy but I'm drawing a blank right now .....

I don't see where you proposed that sail plan above, but yes it would be fine. Or you could do something interesting with the courses as in my print of Victory sailing into Trafalgar, below. Notice how the windward clew of the mainsail has been pulled up a bit to allow the foresail to catch some more wind as Henry alluded to above. Note the breeze was very light on the morning of Trafalgar so all sail was set, even stunsails, to reduce the time spent enduring enemy fire without being able to reply. In fact, sources say they approached the combined Fleet at a casual walking pace all the while under fire.

That is not nautically inaccurate. They weren't slaves to particular sail combinations in light airs. The diagram I posted depicts the steps in reduction from full sail, under a situation of continually increasing wind strength. As Veszett says, in battle the courses were usually furled to reduce fire risk.

Bill, just looked back at your photo. With your fore topgallant and topsail yards fully raised as they are, the sails need to be fully set to be correctly rigged. If you want to furl either, or reef the topsail, you will need to lower the appropriate yard(s) as I explained in post above.

Bill, to put this topic to rest, here is a diagram from Harland's "Seamanship in the Age of Sail", showing the order of taking in sail and thus which combinations are realistic to depict on a model. Note on the c1640 example no reefs are present, a sail is either set or furled (or partially furled on one side see diag #7 with all topmasts struck and just a corner of the course showing). For c1780 reefs are common and one can see the topsails, then the courses, gradually reducing in area as the wind increases. Note how the topsail yard lowers by degrees as more reefs are taken in so if you want to show a reefed topsail you should have the yard lowered on the model. Heller shows SR with reefs, I think we discussed this before, I think Mark stated it could have had them assuming we are modelling SR2.

Hi Bill; I think it would be unusual to be sailing a square rigger on topgallants only. If there's a strong breeze, the topgallants would be the first sails furled since (a) they exert a lot of leaning force, being high up, and (b) the spars are smaller and weaker up there. If there's a light enough breeze to use topgallants, then other sails would be unfurled before them. Typical situations for you might be topgallants furled, one reef in the topsails, courses furled; or maybe courses set, two reefs in the topsails, topgallants furled. As for the staysails, if you have them set then the square yards should be turned far to one side for sailing close to the wind.

Yes, they are double expansion.

A few more pics, including better shot of the double-acting engine, for John's interest. They were busy "restoring" a barge of the type she was designed to tow. Actually the only original part is her red bottom, all else is obviously new timber.

This past summer we took a trip to the Yukon to raft down the Tatshenshini River to coastal Alaska. While in Whitehorse I boarded the SS Klondike paddle steamer which is a Parks Canada national historic site. Here are a few photos. Unfortunately the upper decks were closed to visitors; maintenance is ongoing.

More laser-cutter work. I realized the twin steering platform components could be easily done on the machine. It also etched the plank pattern for their decks. This technology could turn me into a lazy worker - since I was cutting out the 1/16" ply layer panelled parts I also cut out the blank rectangles for the 2nd ply layer as opposed to manually making them to fit. Here is the result: Also started to add trim timbers at the bow. There is a panelling effect remaining to be added below the bulwark rail. Sanding of the u/w epoxy resin not yet done. Finally, my "ship bling" arrived from Etsy!! There are two patterns of "strip" material to place along some of the trim timbers, and two types of decorative medallions, one pair to place each side of the disc at the top of the stem, and another (with eyes to be cut off) to maybe be used as shield motifs along the main bulwarks. Oh, and also added the first "bling" - decorative element around the "hawses" where the anchor ropes come out. External-tooth lock washers epoxied to flat washers, then epoxied at drilled holes at the front of the outriggers. The outrigger front panels have their trim; more will be added along the upper and lower edges of the outrigger sides. Thinking about going to Evergreen styrene strip for this as 1/16" x 3/32" wood strips are kind of small to cut on a 3hp table-saw ......

I did at one point contemplate trying to solder it together from brass, but I regained my senses. 😏

Very good idea with the fife rail posts. And the boat looks great! 👍👍

Electronics skills really aren't required; one simply plugs servos into receiver, plugs battery into receiver, powers up transmitter and receiver, and the entire RC set works. You only need to plug an ESC (Electronic Speed Controller) into a receiver servo slot, and connect the ESC to the motor, and your entire drive system works. But it is a different "endeavour" from static building ........

Looks great Bill! I can't believe how quickly you tear through a build, even with bashing included. What's next on your agenda? An RC boat perhaps? Come over to the dark side ......

I can't seem to find it. TVO broadcast it a couple of years ago; I thought it was on the "Impossible Engineering" series but googling that did not reveal an episode on this ship. There are, though, some interesting youtube videos on her.

Yes. Have you seen the "Great Engineering" series at all? Very very good, ranging from constructing a 19th century offshore lighthouse on a wave-swept rock off Scotland, to building the "Great Eastern". Fascinating ship. I wouldn't mind making an RC model of her, complete with side paddlewheels and stern screw and masts too.

It's incredible to me that they worked that way .... I wonder about the attrition rate due to falls ...

Having a primary loop on the winch is the right approach for the drum type. Look forward to seeing your sea trial video in the spring. We will both have a new boat to debut.

Printed the ram. It came out pretty good except for some of those curved decorations I added between the ball projections (I added some more of these to the design which are not in my TinkerCAD screen grab above). They started to fail because the printer was trying to deposit them on a slope, as I printed the whole thing standing up. I need another print anyway because as it turns out my pins projecting from the hull are not quite symmetric, and also I need to ask the Imagine Space staff about making the base part solid to allow me to use melt-in threaded brass inserts in order to attach the ram with a couple of set screws from below. This original print is all default settings, 0.2mm layer and 10% fill. I will take the opportunity to beef up those arc segments so they can print better, I hope. I also started to clean up the deck beams by framing in the three removable deck areas (bow, stern, entire engine room). The stern framing is very heavy since this will form a handle for picking her up out of the water.

Yes, that tapered base with rounded corners is a mess of tilted cylinders and planes. I cannot figure out how to remove, say, an unwanted corner of a plane sticking out from the side of a cylinder. Maybe TinkerCAD lacks the complexity, or maybe it can be done but I don't know how. We'll see about the print. I had to be at the library printer to get the print time estimate and while there we discussed what orientation to try. I want the decorative elements to be clean. If they come out a mess I may split it into three parts but hope not to have to go there. BIll, TinkerCAD is not too hard to use and as you see it can generate intricate shapes. You might want to look into the whole 3D thing and see if you have any access to a local printer. For example, Heller's "Preussen" has nonsensical kit ladders but my brother printed new ones for me from a TinkerCAD file I sent him. Handy for modelling!