Ian_Grant

Good approach to it, Glen - like NASA testing a new rocket in baby steps. I have to ask - how will you press the hull halves together and get no glue squeeze-out in the mast holes?

Looks great Bill! Now you get the pleasure of trying to paint those darn lanterns. 😉

Yes, it's a shame how gaming has taken over. A friend who used to teach high school Auto Mechanics says in the old days (70's) boys arrived having a rough idea of what a differential did; now they don't know which way to turn a nut to tighten it. 🙄

Fine looking engine lathe you have there!!

You can get adhesive vinyl lettering in various colours and sizes, made by BECC. In fact, "Cast Your Anchor" near you in Toronto carries some.

Our 2004 Sienna had the spare suspended under the vehicle which struck me as a stupid way to handle it, in road-salted Canada. Apparently there was a crank hidden somewhere under the carpeting near the 2nd row seats, which when turned lowered a "cage" holding the wheel, to the road. Luckily never needed to use it. Colour me surprised, there were two recalls over the years to replace the chain that held the wheel up off the road due to rust causing wheels to fall out. A while ago, I mentioned to my wife that we should get it checked out again, but she replied, "Oh, there's no wheel there any more", which was news to me. Apparently, she was coming home on the 401 from a trip a few years previously, and when she pulled out of her parking spot at a highway rest stop the wheel was lying there. So she just continued on her way and never thought to mention it!! 😆 😆

Thanks Bedford; yes I had worries about two y-harnessed lift servos on one beam moving the same amount in degrees. Not sure of consistency to be expected of a given model of servos. Plus there were the problems of where to mount them. Back to four servos total again, which is easier. I can easily adjust the linkage lengths to make both ends consistent.

Hi Glen, yes as a matter of fact I played with Meccano for years including the Meccano "Electrikit" which had coils powerful enough to induce metal rods to move, thus actuating models. Laid the ground for my engineering career. I still have all my old meccano; I kept it around hoping to introduce my kids to it but of course most kids nowadays are not interested. 😢

Working on a full-size oar beam with the plan to make another mock-up like my first one, but with only one side and all 44 oars. Need to make sure I can build it without oars clashing. I thought more about the lift mechanism and woke up one morning with the idea to have a single lift servo push both ends of the beam up and down, analagous to the aileron hook-up in an RC plane. Took a while to gather parts and assemble as my motivation has gone over a cliff in the hot weather. Speaking of which, I still have not had a single sail on my dinghy at the cottage. Spring was pretty cool and I never had anyone there capable of helping me lift it up and into the water. Finally had a chance two weekends ago on a beautiful windy day. I rigged her, sailed a few yards from our dock, and the tiller extension U-joint broke 🙄. As this boat went out of production in 1980 the U-joint didn't owe me anything! There are no boat parts near the cottage. Fixed it at home but last weekend there was no wind 😭. Anyway here's a video my son shot for me, of the vertical movement. The lift servo on the inboard side of the beam has a link going to each end. These drive bellcranks whose other arms have linkages to linkage horns on the beam. The two bellcranks move in complete symmetry, being driven by symmetric holes in the servo arm. The lift servo is offset from centre so that when I build another identical beam for the other side, the two lift servos will not be opposite each other and so will not interfere.

Thanks Richard. I saw that line on the drawing about the two different scales but I couldn't make any sense of them on the 8-1/2"x11" printed sheet. I guess his actual drawing was much larger, about 400mm across the beam, evidently. Bought some heavy paper to mock up hull bulkheads once I have some proposed cross sections.

I have to ask - is that wheel in front just welded on to give the battering ram some more heft? I can't imagine that it's a spare plus there are no bolts or straps........🤔

Glen, looking forward to being amazed by your miniaturization of this "farm".....

She looks superb Vic! I couldn't do that with non-shaky hands............

Same with my model planes in the 80's oops I meant in the 70's. They always ended up with an oil mess on the nose and at the wing roots. Don't know what it's like now; I've seen some amazing model plane engines ($$$) at the hobby shop nowadays, 4-strokes with valves...

Amazed that that's all the pilot had to sit on - a backless (or nearly so) chair with a lap belt! Not much more evolved than a tractor seat.

Hands of a surgeon....missed your calling..,.

Yet another new note on my SR instructions, along with the recently mentioned bowsprit steeve.........for when I get there.

Looking wonderful already!

Impressive! Did you have to fold up that hull somehow, or does it come formed?

The science and tech museum underwent a huge renovation several years ago. Many of the old exhibits were replaced by new stuff. I still like their old bicycle collection, in fact we were there on a day when you could try out a penny-farthing; and they kept their two or three steam locomotives but like many museums nowadays it has been "dumbed down" with interactive displays that convey less information, and many blinking lights e.g. there is a big tunnel with thousands of LEDs that supposedly teaches you about fiber-optic communications. Really just something for the kids to run through.

Underhill mentions that the upper topsail lifts are seized to shackles at each end of the topgallant mast fid (!?), and the upper topsail buntlines pass through a double block seized beneath the cross trees. Bottom line is there are more ways to rig stuff than there are ways to skin a cat. For my Preussen I just look through Underhill, rig it in a reasonable way, and about 0.01% of people would even know what they're looking at. 😄

According to Underhill, the trestle-trees, cross-trees, and spreaders are all lengths of angle-iron. The trestle-trees are riveted along the top edges of cheek pieces which are triangular and are centred on the lower mast i.e. they project both forward and aft of the mast. Hard to see them in your dark revell mast but the shape doesn't look right. They shouldn't have that re-curve along the forward edge like wood cheeks on a wood mast. I'd say that cheeks are required, I can't imagine just riveting angle iron at the single point where it meets the round mast. I agree that those bits of plastic between the cross trees should not be there. Other than the cheeks Underhill agrees with Campbell in all other respects. On the other hand I don't see cheeks in this photo although it's hard to see at all. If they are there then they're painted like the mast.

Beautiful model! I see you like macaws - do you have one?

Yes I have seen a video of a similar design, but the circular stroke is very inefficient and silly looking. If I can't have software-controlled rowing where I can alter oar dynamics as I please then why bother going further with this project....

Being unhappy with the above bulky result I explored reducing the height of the ship. The minimum deck height was dictated by two things (1) the upper reme oar looms' top limit when in the water, and (2) the upper end of the 2-1/4" linear bearing when oar beam is in high position. To address this I decided to reduce the loom length from 2" to 1.5". This increases the force to push two remes from 2lb to 2.6lb. However, the shorter looms require a shorter stroke to move the oars over the same arc; as it turns out a servo moving 120 degrees only needs a 0.866" arm to give the new 1.5" (max) stroke. Max torque is then (2.6)*(0.866) = 2.25 lb-in, the same as before. Since I am now providing a lift servo at each end of the beam I can use shorter 1-1/8" linear bearings with no issue, I think. I will have to build yet another jig to prove this out. Here is the new profile with draft decreased in tandem with deck height. The depth of the outrigger is reduced to match the shorter looms. It is now a scale 24" which I think is enough to have those oarsmen clear of their lower crewmates ie 24" is a reasonable width value for wide-shouldered crewmen. The sweep servo is shown in dotted form on the right. I discovered a "low profile" servo HS-77BB meant for aircraft tail controls etc; it is ideal to use as lift servos and can be mounted above the base beam as shown, which is better than the first scheme of standard servos attached beneath the beams from a maintenance and clearances point of view. Only problem is they cost twice as much as a standard servo, and I already have four standard servos to hand. Will explore more configurations for lift function. I also decided to swivel the mounting clamps on the bearings 90 degrees then I can have the oar beam run along the centre of the base beams instead of the inner edge. This makes a lot more room along the centre of the ship. Here is the new plan view for this cross section. I like it a lot more than the previous ship. It's much leaner and more like a galley. I did add an inch at the bows as mentioned above, just tweaking the space for the electronics here. Still a bit worried about stability. I may add 1/8" back to the draft; on the other hand just look at the midships cross section of the Olympias in post #100.....I have a lot more hull in the water already. One last note - I went to a 3D print shop armed with .stl files for an oar and an oar pivot I quickly drew in TinkerCAD. Fancy materials were too expensive. They said they would print one of each in something cheaper and call me. Well I went over yesterday to see the results, printed in acrylic. The oar is a bit bendy, not sure it would stay straight enough; they're pretty close together in the water. Are we all sitting down? This option would be $11 a set i.e. per oar/pivot set. Just $968 plus tax for all 88 of them. Sheesh! I thought 3D printing was supposed to be cheap. They're printing a set for me in PLA now just to show me. That would be dirt cheap but I'm pretty sure it would not be robust enough. I've already made up my mind to just use wood dowels for oars, with eyes and screws at the loom like I did in my software development jig. Just need to figure out how to jig fitting blades to dowel consistently over 88 instances, say 100 with a few spares.