Ian_Grant

"Had I known the cabinet was for YOU, I would have chopped it into pieces with an AXE!!!" Actually I'm now not sure it was Seinfeld, wasn't thinking of that soup-nazi episode; but somewhere a character gets a tattoo of Chinese characters thinking they have deep meaning then discovers that it just reads "soup". Wasn't that Seinfeld??😵

Glen, are you sure the Chinese characters don't translate to "soup"? 😆 (.....calling all "Seinfeld" fans........)

Thanks Glen! I need to think out of the box, the way you do........😀

Yes it could reasonably be used in parts of a planetary explorer ship 😄

So I assembled a bunch of parts into the required length of mechanism. The beam is a bit of a kludge of disparate parts, and the baseplate is longer than necessary because the shorter length was out of stock. Shown are the 2-1/2" linear bearings which do slide nicely on the SS shafts. You can see how lo-o-o-ng the beam is compared to the length of the bearing surfaces at the ends. In point of fact, it cannot reliably be operated by a single servo in the middle (or in this case my finger); one can see sometimes different vertical shifts at the two ends. So the scheme with two beams on only 1-1/4" bearings is out. Probably just as well. There will be a lift servo at each end of each beam, with the servo pair on a given beam y-harnessed to the Arduino output. The U-channel for mounting oars has to be in three pieces as shown because this channel only comes in limited lengths. I also find that the hinges are stiff, too stiff in my opinion. Oil seems to make no difference. Can I find some piano hinges with metric hole spacing I wonder? Still wondering how much of this stuff to use, and how much to make from Baltic Birch plywood.

TinkerCAD is handy, and not so complicated to figure out as a lot of 3d software. Keep up the good work! Ian

Hi Bruce - when ship plans and drawings list a size for rope or wire, the custom is to give the circumference not the diameter. A 3-1/2" DIA steel wire would be like an iron tree! Does Campbell actually say "diameter"? I'm guessing not. If so, your "3-1/2" guys are about 1.114"DIA or about 1/4mm at 1/96. The 5" main stay works out to about 1.6"DIA which would be about 1/2mm at 1/96. These large stays are doubled for added strength. These threads seem small if you're accustomed to building earlier wood ships with hemp ropes.......steel wire delivers so much more tensile strength in a given diameter. Keep up the great work! Do you have Underhill's clipper rigging book? By the way, I agree with Rob about using the Revell kit blocks. They look fine when rigged and no stropping required! A little paint is even better.

Actually the knowledge is not completely lost. For example, in 1989 the Jamestown Colony laid down the keel for a replica of "Susan Constant" from 1607 with Brian Lavery as their consultant on wood shipbuilding of the day. An experienced crew of shipwrights took more than a year to do the job. I have a book "Wooden Ship: The Art History and Revival of Wooden Shipbuilding" by Spectre and Larkin which has many photographs of this authentic build in progress. I also recall visiting "Victory" in about 1988 (?) when yet another refit was in progress, and watching some workers bending the largest teak? plank I had ever seen around the bows on the port side. In the rain. 😬 Keep up the good work!

Bill, in those days the sails were lashed to the yards by robands with the result that the heads of the sails were underneath the yard. It's only in the more modern ships that the yards were equipped with jackstay bars running along their tops, to which the sails were attached; in this case yes the sail smothers the front of the yard. In fact, in windjammers a second bar was run along just behind the jackstay, called the safety stay. It provided a handhold in an emergency. Additionally, small rope loops were attached to it through which crew could thrust a forearm to secure them when using both hands. Here's a picture of how it was in the old days..........

Bill you've made incredible progress in a single year, as I've said before. Regarding your blocks, the smaller blocks look better for the bunt and leech lines. But the smaller version of the topsail sheet block (upper yard in the photo) is too small. The bigger version on the lower yard is more to scale; ideally it should be 1/4" same as the quarter blocks below the jeer blocks. Conversely, the 12" lift blocks, attached to the sheet blocks, should be about half the size of the sheet blocks, and are actually only slightly larger than the buntline blocks.. I think the smaller lift block, shown on the upper yard, is better. Finally, a reminder that the buntline blocks don't dangle above or below the yard, but rather lie along its front face. See the famous Plan 8.

How about a couple of hull shots, for those of us on the edge of our seats? 😄

Good recovery, Bill. 👍

Bill, just to clarify, the topgallant yards would not have had booms or boom irons like the lower yards. The topgallant stuns'l's foot would be set on the topsail yard boom, and its head on a small spar dangling from a block on the topgallant yard. You can make this out on the Geoff Hunt print.

Looking great! I happened to catch your talk of thin line - I'm searching for something to use for ratlines at 1:150 scale, something fine and non-fuzzy. Would this cotton line meet the need; if so what is it please? Thanks, Ian

No I just ignored them as this light equipment would be stored until needed. I did however make fore and main royal yards for her, which I stowed lashed to the inside of the topmast shrouds, one to port and one to starboard.

Very nice! I find your topmast cross-trees more convincing than Heller's strange interpretation which has the masts between the 1st and 2nd cross-trees and the 3rd dangling out way in back of the masts.

Bill, according to my print of Geoff Hunt's "England Expects" which depicts Victory plodding into Trafalgar in very light winds, she had stuns'ls on the fore and main topgallant yards too.

Just wondering how accurate that is - I'm not a CS expert - but there would be a lot of force on that railing stanchion from the chain holding the fluke end! Or are those stanchions iron too?

I think the main reason windjammer ratlines didn't need to be as wide is because there were far fewer men trying to get aloft at once; Victory for example would put more men on a topsail yard for reefing her massive sails than Preussen probably had on watch. Earlier in this log there was a brief discussion on ratlines and shrouds. Veszett in post #43 sent pics of a model showing six shrouds on the lower masts with ratlines spanning four, or six for every 5th one; also a photo of Preussen a few posts later that seem to show six. Heller only has five shrouds which I ended up not changing. So I suppose I could do three, or five every 5th one. That would be somewhat fewer knots than I estimated. I don't mind the tedium of tying the knots, I'm just afraid that at 1/10" spacing they'll look more like a solid wall unless I can find some very fine non-fuzzy line. I may cheat and go to 1/8" spacing; just don't tell anyone! 😄

Makes hot chocolate the best ever! 👍

Actually, I looked again at my Heller Victory, and it's not impossibly more knots than for her. Keep in mind that Victory's fore and main lower ratlines tie off to 9 and sometimes 11 shrouds so they add up very quickly too.

Thanks Kevin and Jerome! Jerome you have me thinking - the topgallant and topmast shrouds are only in twos and threes anyway so maybe skip the knots on the centre topmast shroud. For the lower, maybe just knot the two ends as well.....hmmm.....

Standing rigging done at last! Well, except the ratlines. I accidentally bumped the bowsprit and broke the martingales. Glued them up but the outer broke again later, I barely touched it. Needed to get beneath to work on it. Tried this arrangement, but lighting from below and dazzle from above were issues..... ....so switched to this setup which was much better. I ended up replacing my brass tube martingales with thread, doubled and twisted like I did for the guys. I also replaced the dolphin striker with a slightly stouter tube. Last standing rigging line to do was the fore royal stay. Wouldn't you know it, when I pulled it taut my little white rigging screw on the bowsprit came apart - brass tube separated from the etched eye on the bowsprit; not enough glue. Then the damn thing twinged off my tweezers while I attempted to re-glue it and went off to the 4th dimension. Had to make and paint a new one. Here's a shot of the bowsprit with its rigging screws. The two on the centre line tighten the inner and outer jibstays; the one to port (barely seen) is the doubled fore topgallant stay; that to starboard is the fore royal stay (single). This is all in accordance with Longridge. I doubled the topgallant stays too, just to give them some "heft" as my thread is slightly smaller than scale. Still haven't trimmed the safety netting! Also realized I forgot the footropes but at this point I will leave it as is. Here are some shots of the current state, with my patented background white. Not bad except the fore and mizzen topgallant masts ended up bowed back a little. Especially the fore mast. But athwartships alignment is good! For the running rigging I drilled holes through the pin rails adjacent to the vestigial pins Heller provided. Lines pass through the hole and are tied in a knot, then covered with little "coils". This photo was meant to show this but the coils on the opposite bulwark rails are, sadly, out of focus. The untrimmed ends of the shrouds await their white seizings, between the ratlines. Shrouds, stays, etc were simply clove-hitched to the masts. It looks ok as seen here although the accumulated turns are double that of authentic rigging. No one will know except us. And finally a shot which attempts to show the density of the backstays on this ship. I just noticed there is a clip still on one of the fore topgallant shrouds....oops! Last major task is to add the yards. Each requires four blocks of some sort, for either clew lines or downhauls depending on whether it's a fixed or movable yard. The topsail sheets will be chain, slightly over-scale but I wanted to show them as such to add to the majesty. 😉 As you can see there are many yards. Still undecided about their footropes......at this scale......leaning towards no. But just before I get there.......ratlines!!?? To be in scale I'd need a ratline every 0.1" times five masts. I estimate 3100 clove hitches. 🤪😭 Not sure I want to do them but feel ship would look odd without them........ I have no idea what to use for these..........fly tying line?....wire?....any suggestions welcome.

I used a pen along my Victory's deck seams but I will never do it that way again; for Preussen I just applied a wash which was left in the seams after wiping. Much easier and probably more permanent.

WARNING: Rant on US/Canada border trans-shipping ahead.......... Well I got my package from Servocity today. If I thought my heart nearly stopped when I saw my Cart total, it came even closer when the UPS guy wanted another $109CDN from me at the door for, ahem, GST and brokerage fees and taxes on brokerage fees. This on top of already paying $49.44USD for shipping $188.57USD worth of parts to the border. Servocity has a standard shipping fee of $8.99USD within the USA, so a US resident of Ogdensburg, say, gets his/her shipment for $8.99 but I pay $40USD more for my shipment to travel the extra 6km to the border. Then add $69.30 for brokerage fees and $9.01 tax on that. Finally add Canadian GST which is also applied to the shipping fees not just the product value. Bottom line, I received $188.57USD ($236.83CDN) worth of parts for $408.28CDN to my door, an increase of merely 72.3% in shipping and up charges. RIDICULOUS! HIGHWAY ROBBERY! And that just allows me to PARTIALLY build ONE SIDE of the galley mechanism.....at these prices I may use these parts as drill guides and revert to a mix of metal and wood components, or maybe just give up altogether.