Ian_Grant

I see what you mean. Will mull it over. Think I need to rig up a drafting table of some sort. Home-made t-square at least and some taped-together grid paper to get going. happy modelling!

Veering back and forth between excitement and hopelessness on this project. Fundamental issue is I do not have a lines plan for a Roman galley. They don't exist. I've always known this but now the rubber is hitting the road. I used Pitassi's quadrireme creation for fundamental length and beam measurements. His top view shows the profile of waterline and deck bulwark and that's it. Problem is that his tiny 4" drawing is hard to measure proportions from. At 1/32 scale I came up with the general top view shown here, drawn at 1/4 size on grid paper. This was an effort to see if I am likely to have the space for all the electronics given that the rowing mechanism takes up most of the interior. It looks a bit tight in the bows for all the connectors sticking out perpendicular to the Arduino PCBs given the looming presence of the giant-scale sweep servos. I may stretch the bow out another inch or so. I've decided to use the Servocity low-flange beam for the bases of the oar beams, with the linear bearings to allow lift movement. I will however revert to the simple eye-screws to mount the oars onto wood like my earlier rowing test jig; no more u-channels and fancy pivots and hinges. As seen the oars require 27" of space, then there is a bit added at each end to accommodate the vertical shafts and linear bearings; then a "no-go" zone at each end required for the beams to do their sweep back and forth. The four lift servos will be mounted beneath the beam bases, screwed to them so they move along with them. I forgot to draw the rudder servo but there's nothing else back there and anyway I'm not sure yet how I will mount them or activate them. Probably will heed my old dad's advice and "you'll never figure out every detail before you start; have a basic plan then solve issues as they arise". So now I know to extend the bows a little. Next was verifying there was space in the central cross-section to do the rowing. I really want a space along the keel to place ballast and the battery. Will be a 5-cell NiMH to provide 6V, and will need to be a "flat-pack" style not a "Hump-Back Pack". The cross section I came up with has an 8" waterline beam which is a little beamier than Pitassi's estimate at 1/32 scale. I got that by enlarging the Olympias midship section drawing, and modifying to a bireme with my desired freeboard and my made-up deck level. Here is the result. Left side shows the oar beam placement and the outrigger for the upper reme. The slides are only 17" long, placed at the centre of the beam. This leaves nothing at the ends to get in the way of the lift servos as shown on the right. Clearance is a bit tight for them; I've shown it notched into the side flange of the metal base beam, or I could omit a frame in their locale. By the way, frame spacing will be 2.5", or double the oar spacing. There is ample room in the centre for the 1" wide battery pack. Tricky part will be constructing the outrigger. I need to somehow provide some sort of framing to reinforce it, without interfering with the cycle of the upper oars. Not a lot of latitude for members. I will have to rely on the plywood bottom face of the outrigger to hold the lower hull's edge in a straight line above the upper oars since no cross-beams can be added to the hull here because of the mechanisms. Just how to make this outrigger solid enough to support the removable deck is another question. I did allow for 3/8" beams for the deck itself. Worried I have too much of the hull under water...but if waterline drops so must oar mechanisms then I'm in trouble with clearances...🤔 Lastly, hull lines. All that is available is the drawings of trireme Olympias. I expected them to be much like other lines plans I have seen but after downloading I was shocked to find the following: He seems to have the cross sections, waterlines, and buttock lines all on a single sheet with the sections drawn right on top of the buttocks. Never seen that before. And I cannot find any indication of station placement and spacing in the general arrangement (below; and just look at how little of it is in the water!). Kudos to Richard Braithewaite for deciphering these for his model. I will have to scratch my head; I wish I had my old drafting table and arm. I need to tweak the bow and stern to my made-up waterline to get ram and rudders correct, and stretch/compress them to my desired lengths. 🤪 I expect I will have to do a card mock-up to verify the lines are anything like correct.

Marc, hope you have a great time! We're booked for Hawaii in September. Already worried about airport fiascos especially here in Canada. Praying there isn't another wave in the fall, although I finally got covid last week so my immunity should be pretty good.

Bruce, sorry to hear that. Best wishes for a full and speedy recovery!

Bill, remember that ropes on ships are sized according to circumference not diameter. A 1.5mm thread would be larger than the lower shrouds. The 6" circumference tye is 1.9" in diameter, 19 thou at 1/100 scale, almost exactly 1/2mm. The 3.5" halliard is about 1.1" in diameter, 11 thou at 1/100 scale, almost exactly 1/4 mm. I thought you were at the beach? 😃

I thought that might be the case! it looks much neater now.....😉

Bill, I don't see a difference?....Please advise.........🤔

She looks nice, Bill. You should be done next week! On to the SR........

Doesn't look much like the real one:

Glen, you're a wizard at miniatures!

Yes I think overhand knots are the answer. On Victory, I tied several widely spaced ratlines along the shrouds, and put glue on them to make them rigid. Then I filled in the intervening ratlines with less fear of hourglassing. Only problem was the glue darkened them, so I matt varnished the lot afterwards.

At this scale a wood thimble would look a bit big against the block. I just trapped a couple of bits of thread under the strop at each end of the block, to form loops around the backstay. Perhaps you could push a needle and thread through between the block and its strop? I've done that before.

What we are concerned with here is getting the length of the tyes right, such that the halyards actually could raise and lower the yard. Because of the way the tyes are rigged at the topmast head, those 26" double blocks move twice as far up or down than the topsail yard moves down or up. If the tyes were too long, the 26" double blocks would collide with the single blocks before the yard could be fully raised. With the yard lowered, the double blocks need to be at least twice as far above the lower single blocks as the expected travel of the yard. Longridge is fully aware of this, and mentions elsewhere in his book about otherwise excellent models being "spoiled" by rigging that could not operate. Thus he gives the guidance that if the double blocks are about level with the cap when the yard is resting on the cap, that would be about right for a properly operable halyard. In Plan 7 the yard is not resting on the cap, therefore the block is necessarily lower down. It would move higher if the yard was in fact on the cap. However I think Longridge was a little off here, because if the yard dropped the remaining "inch" let's call it, the block would have to move up 2" as stated above. I think he forgot about that when he drew this.

Looks very good!

That's them. I thought he mentioned them but couldn't find it.

Breathtaking!

Took a crack at some test ratlines on a little jig, using my trusty 0.1mm Amati tan line. I found the knots were hard to tighten on the shroud threads, I think because the ratlines are not far smaller relative to them. On the 1/100 Victory the ratlines are significantly smaller than the shrouds and the knots formed better. Clove hitches were large looking here, and I could not get the two loops to converge together properly on the shroud, so I resorted to half hitches. Not all that happy with the result, see below. The ratlines got tighter with practice as I went up, but on the other hand the left shroud started to hourglass. Pondering my next move............ 😫

Bill, looking again I see Longridge makes no mention of them. I was confused in that some of my other books describe them. Basically, they are tackles which dangle from the ends of the fore and main yards in order to use them as cranes to hoist stuff eg boats, nets of cannonballs, large casks. They can be shown triced up to the yard when not in use. I expect they would be unrigged when at sea. I rigged them, depicted as triced up, because my model is without sails, yards lowered, presumably in harbour for a while to come. You can read about them in Hackney's Victory book, or in Petersen if you have them, and decide if you want to just skip them.

Yes, TinkerCAD. Not sure I want to have to figure out the nuances of a "real" CAD package. Life's too short....😃

Thanks Bill, it's just fun to help people out with this model which I know is a difficult build. Actually I expect your next query to be about those yardarm tackles I mentioned. They're very confusing to figure out.....😁

Remember when I talked about having a machine shop CNC me some bits of aluminum for oar pivots where they attach to the u-channel? Something like this: I took a drawing to a local machine shop and requested a quote. I just got it back. About $11 apiece, or $968 for all eighty-eight. Plus tax. 😲 A flat-head screw trapping a screw-eye loosely sounds pretty good about now! I was also thinking about maybe having the oars 3D printed using "hard" resin. Was planning to go to a local place and ask about 88 of them (100 with spares). Now I'm wondering. Might be good for a laugh, if nothing else. It appears I am over-thinking and over-engineering this project. Will be looking into whether I can return some of that expensive Servocity stuff and go back to the simple methods.

Hey Paul, thanks for your experience! Actually, living in Ottawa, we are only about an hour drive from Ogdensburg NY. Many people around here have US stuff shipped to the Ogdensburg UPS store which runs a parcel pickup for Canadians. You then drive down, tell US customs what you're up to and hand them (used to be) $10, pick it up for a (used to be ) $5 fee, then drive back across the border and pay the applicable duty. I've done this myself in the past for some special bird surgery stuff my wife ordered for her vet clinic, before COVID. I'm not sure what happens now vis-a-vis coming back into Canada, no rapid test, or what the latest requirements are. If I could have done this for this order I would have saved about CDN$100 even after paying for the gas there and back. So there's some hope yet.

The lifts are best understood using Plan 9 too. See where the bottom of the topmast cap is shown right at the top of the diagram? A line there is labelled "Standing part of Lift". That's attached to the span going round the cap that Longridge mentions. Now look down at the top of the shrouds, just below the end of the forward cross tree. A twin "sister block" is seized between the 1st and 2nd shrouds. I made this by gluing two blocks together with an additional scrap of wood at each end, then using three seizings to attach to the shrouds. This sister block is labelled "Upper sheave > Reef Tackle ; Lower Sheave > Topsail Yard Lift". So there you have it: the lifts start at the topmast cap, run through the lift blocks at the ends of the topsail yard, run through the lower sheaves of the sister blocks, and down to deck. You can see them on Plan 7 if you know where to look; don't get confused with the topsail sheet and clew lines, and the reef tackle line, all also shown in the vicinity. By the by, answering your earlier query about the lower yard I forgot to mention the yardarm tackles. You could omit them if you wish but many modellers like to rig them as they are of interest in their utility.

Bill, the topsail yards have two halliards to take the strain and equalize the lateral pressure on the topmast. As always Longridge describes it accurately, but it is difficult to parse the facts. Let's look at pictures. Plan 9 depicts the fore cross trees and the topsail yard. The first bit you have highlighted in orange describes the large 20 double tye block at the yard's centre, with the two buntline blocks attached to its strop, projecting like bunny ears. It also describes the two single blocks suspended close up beneath the crosstrees (difficult to see in plan 9, but labelled "20" single tye block each side". You can see the long strop of the starboard block passing up the mast just behind the middle crosstree, with its eye captured by several turns of a lashing around the mast, just above the last backstay ("above the rigging" as Longridge puts it). See the plan 9 note "Standing part of each tye is clinched around the mast here", just above the aforementioned lashing? Those are the start of the two tyes. The starboard tye goes through one sheave of the double block on the yard from stbd to port, then up through the port single block. Correspondingly, the port tye goes through the other sheave of the double block from port to stb, then up through the starboard single block. We now have two tye ropes emerging from the two single blocks, one on each side. They pass partway down the mast and each ends with a 26" double block. Now let's look at plan 7. At the after end of the main channel you see a block a few feet above the bulwarks with its long strop connected to an eye on the channel. That's the 26" single block Longridge says is attached by a 3-1/2" halliard to the double 26" block on the tye. He mentions a becket on the upper end of this single block; that's to attach the end of this halliard which then goes double block - single block - double block - kevel on deck. (At this scale I just trap the halliard under the strop when stropping the block, then tie a knot in the halliard to secure it). Two more things of note: the length of the tye is such that if the topsail yard is lowered, the 26" double blocks should be about at the level of the EDIT: CORRECTION topmast lower mast cap (Longridge says this but you didn't highlight it). If you are rigging the yard raised with a sail on it then adjust the block position down accordingly. Secondly, the 26" double blocks are attached to the after topmast backstay with thimbles ensuring that it slides up and down without twisting. Longridge describes this at very end of pg 246, and 247. Referring again to plan 7, Longridge has indicated this by sketching a short length of the backstay to the left of the 26" double block with two little lines indicating the attachment. Hope this helps. Here is how Petersen illustrates it, as a backup aid. He doesn't show the double blocks sliding on the backstay, on this frigate. Nor are the buntline blocks shown.

Actually they don't all attach to the yard (example the nave line, sheets and tacks) but you pretty much have to rig most of them. Many have to do with supporting the yard and are pretty essential. You could omit the nave line, it's pretty much invisible anyway. If you are omitting sails you could leave off the buntlines and slab lines. The clew lines are normally attached to the sheets (and tacks, for lower sails) in this case (which is what Longridge drew in plan 7). Or you could omit the sheet and clew lines; which would look pretty bare! In my case, without sails, I left off the slab lines but I did rig the bunt lines, just hitched to the yards, because I thought all the blocks under the fore top would look odd if left empty and anyway I had all the buntline blocks on the yards. I also rigged all the bowlines on the ship, again just hitched to the yard in positions sort of near where they would be if a sail was furled on the yard.