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Ian_Grant

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Everything posted by Ian_Grant

  1. Ian_Grant
    Problem solved. Port side mechanism mounted in the hull. Checking the new oar geometry will work in the hull cavity without hitting deck beams etc when blades are in the water (pic). Upper oars will be 1/2" longer than lower oars, will need to make 42 of them. Existing 44 oars will be the lowers. Found out I can buy lead shot at a nearby shooting range. Planning to buy plastic film-roll canisters to fill with shot as opposed to pouring loose shot into the hull. Snag is I must buy 25 lbs of shot 🤨, will sell the remainder on. Pic shows extra blades taped to upper oars to depict their new length. Need to sand and varnish at least 22 oars; complete the mechanism install; install the 1/4 scale sweep servo; get the shot and ballast hull; try it in the pool with just lower oars on one side to see if they get traction. If so I will spend the money and time to mechanize the starboard side and complete hull decoration and painting. Not sure if I will get the deck built this year - our summers are short and should be enjoyed.
  2. Ian_Grant
    Actually, that looks great!
  3. Ian_Grant
    By the way Glen, I think standard tile grout may be better as your wall mortar than caulk. The caulk will be hard to smooth out when dry, but grout is always just wiped smooth once partially set. No muss, no fuss.
  4. Ian_Grant
    Glen, I realized I had forgotten your intentions for this SIB.......that last post of mine shows a Greek ship not a Roman one. There are a few drawings of Roman types at the following: https://naval-encyclopedia.com/antique-ships/roman-ships
  5. Ian_Grant
    That's a very fancy impression of a trireme, perhaps envisioned as an Emperor's personal ship. A more workaday impression is the trireme "Olympias" which was built around 1990-2000, was tested with 170 volunteer rowers, and is now on display near Athens. Here is the general arrangement drawing. There are several videos on youtube. I have many more detailed drawings of her if you are interested, but for SIB this might suffice.
  6. Ian_Grant
    I seem to have caused a fruitless digression, again. Sorry. I wasn't sure which half of the century SR was from; Andersen states that in the latter half everyone did indeed have chains. BIll, that 4th part is called the "preventer plate".
  7. Ian_Grant
    A plate is (was?) a single piece of metal with a hook at one end for the deadeye strop and a hole (sometimes two) at the other end to bolt to the hull. I know Dafi's SR had single plates in the form of straight bars, I've seen the photos. But he made that a long time ago; maybe he would differ now. In later centuries chains ie the 3-piece link you are used to, were used by all. But Andersen is quite definite that from 1600 to 1640 all ships used plates as he shows in the diagrams. What year is this SR supposed to be? Marc would know. As to your soldering, is the tip dirty? It needs to be cleaned and tinned for effective use.
  8. Ian_Grant
    Does the copper have a coating on it that you need to sand off maybe? Is that tube some kind of liquid flux? Bill, chain plates were not always like the ones on Victory. According to Andersen, all nations used plates, not chains, at least for the first forty years of the 17th century. Then everyone switched to chains for 15 years, then English ships switched back to plates. I'm not even sure what year SR purports to be from. I remember seeing Dafi's SR with plates. Take everything I say here with a grain of salt, I haven't done any research. Andersen states (twice) that chains/plates is a difficult matter.
  9. Ian_Grant
    It came yesterday. It's a pretty dense book, no illustrations at all except for a couple of maps of the ancient Mediterrenean. Thank goodness, it's not like reading the Iliad with all its repetition; "he fell, and his armour crashed around him". I guess because Polybius is a historian not a poet. I'll see if he mentions twin hulls. Even if he does, I'm not building one. 🙄
  10. Ian_Grant
    My all-time favourite back cover work was from a guy who carves animal skulls out of burls, with the darker lines inherent in the burls looking like fused bones.....
  11. Ian_Grant
    HaHa! I thought it was on the actual magazine's web site.....your work could well be on the back cover...........
  12. Ian_Grant
    Marc, you're a dark horse..........featured in the Fine Woodworking gallery !!!!!! ...... Beautiful pieces.......Respect......
  13. Ian_Grant
    Doug, I was looking for some stuff at Servocity and noticed they still sell "servo gearboxes" for those who need more torque, which reminded me of your CA build. Rereading your posts I see you mentioned the instructions show outlines for three sail servos. That being the case you can have a 785 for each sail so each one should be able to handle the pull force of its sail's sheet just fine. With all fore-and-aft rig there is no need for independent movement of sail servos (like in a model square-rigger with separate foremast brace controls to aid in tacking) so I suppose you just y-harness them all to your receiver output. Possible snag is you need different travel for each; if you can't mcgyver it you'll need to use three radio channels and get your thumbs used to the necessary stick movement patterns on your TX box. As for the mizzen, you could possibly control it's sheet from one of the three servos, if it's run is conveniently 1/2 that of one of the other sails (a movement of 1/2 is easy to achieve with a pulley).........you could adjust the position at which the sheet attaches to the yard to fine-tune the required run. When I finish my current RC build (hopefully this summer), and then finish rigging my interrupted static model, I want to build an RC square-rigger using some of the ideas in the Williams book and also those of Neville Wade who you can find on the internet. Looking forward to seeing your progress.....👍
  14. Ian_Grant
    You could make new davits from brass rod, chucked in a drill to taper.....then solder on copper eyes at ends. Not too hard.
  15. Ian_Grant
    Glen, Hope your friend makes a good recovery! The amount of rehab after a stroke is unpredictable - here's hoping she is at the easier end!!
  16. Ian_Grant
    Hi Bill, no it won't cause you any construction problems. You could emulate Marc and raise the lower masts his 3/8" by adding 3/8" of some material at the lower ends to mate with the steps. Or not bother.
  17. Ian_Grant
    Bill the topmasts are what you are referring to as the middle section. The upper masts are the topgallant masts.
  18. Ian_Grant
    Bill, just a word before you proceed that the topmasts of the SR kit are widely thought to be too long. To be sent down properly after the fid is removed, their upper ends must clear the mast tops by the time their butt ends hit the deck. Obviously I haven't looked at my parts, but from the overall drawing on the first page of the instructions the fore topmast particularly looks crazy long. Andersen lists proper proportions in his book.
  19. Ian_Grant
    I've been preoccupied with building a new little deck to access our new above ground pool (some of you may recall the old one was crushed by a falling tree) and trying to tidy up landscape beside it after I ripped out the old pool with its external braces along the straight sides of the oval. I applied epoxy resin to the inside of the galley using West System resin and slow hardener I had left from repairing my 1:1 boat. It took AGES to dry. Before epoxying the outside underwater hull I ran out and got some fast hardener (no, not 😉Viagra). It dried quickly. Man, is it glossy! I'll be scuff sanding before painting. Now trying to install the mechanism on the port side. I ran into an issue regarding the drawer slides: I cut the ends off to save weight as discussed previously but now they have almost zero "play". They are in pairs at the ends of the aluminum channel and I'll need to screw them into their little platforms on the hull flooring exactly the right distance apart or they'll bind. This is exactly what happened on my first attempt where I just eyeballed drilling the holes on centre. I'll need to set up a little jig on the drill press to drill consistent holes. Failing that I may have to fall back on having the aluminum channel slide back and forth through two "guides" made of laminate or zero friction tape. Yuck. Some pics ...
  20. Ian_Grant
    Glen, this exchange has been so interesting that I have just ordered the Oxford University Press translation of Polybius's "Histories". I hope it's not dry reading like the "Iliad" but at any rate it's only $17.......
  21. Ian_Grant
    "...became a scene of the utmost confusion." HaHa...that's one way of putting it I guess.
  22. Ian_Grant
    Bill, to carry on with the talk about jigsaw puzzles in Marc's log, your wife could be challenged by this 76" x 55" puzzle: 🫢 https://www.ebay.com/itm/404097350340
  23. Ian_Grant
    OMG - LOL ... no way no how... 😅 Actually Glen for my next build I want to make an RC full-rigged 3-master.
  24. Ian_Grant
    Glen, you have surpassed yourself with this idea. Very interesting history; I had never heard of the claw nor did I know that Archimedes was killed in a siege. I do remember, though, spending a lunchtime hour puzzling my way through his geometric approximation of pi in a "History of Science" course in first-year engineering. Greek mathematicians were very clever and it amazes me how much they were able to calculate; another example is Eratosthenes's calculation of the circumference of earth which was only about 2% in error. Surprisingly perhaps, his math was very simple compared to Archimedes's calculation. Just a correction: my galley is a quadrireme not a trireme. It's surprising how little we actually know for certain about these ships. A quadrireme may have had 3 banks of oars with 2 men on one of them (analagous to your quinquireme drawing above), or 2 banks of oars with 2 men apiece. This is because it is thought that the "quad...." or "quinqui...." indicated the basic "unit" of men per "subset" of oars. I opted for two banks of oars to keep my model simpler. There were also "sexteres" which are broadly interpreted as triremes with 2 men per oar. But there are also mentions in surviving texts of "twelves", "sixteens", and even "twenties". To my knowledge no one has any idea what rowing system they employed. As an aside, it is interesting to analyze the effect of multiple men per oar on total power for the ship. Adding a second man on an oar does not double its power because the outermost rower exerts pull over a shorter distance therefore adds less energy. According to Pitassi he generates about 0.8 "manpower" giving 1.8 "manpower" per double-manned oar. (a third man adds only about 0.6 manpower). If you believe a quadrireme had 3 banks of oars having 1-1-2 men, each set of 4 men generates 3.8 manpower. If you believe a quadrireme had 2 banks of oars having 2-2 men, each set of 4 men generates 3.6 manpower ("only" 5% less but speed was critical in galley battles). Ancient galleys are a fascinating subject. I'm looking forward to your build progress, and can't wait to see the little oars moving! 😉
  25. Ian_Grant
    When the Royal Navy was ordered in 1803 to intercept the annual Spanish treasure fleet bringing gold from the Americas, the British squadron searched by simply sailing back and forth in line abreast straddling the latitude of Cadiz, knowing that the fleet by Spanish law must arrive there and probably would do exactly as popeye says: sail along Cadiz's latitude since they would likely be uncertain of their longitude after a long voyage. Bill, I don't know how far you got in the Hornblower books, but if you enjoyed the first couple, this search is ably described by Forrester in "Hornblower and the Hotspur".

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