Sam Ladley

I'm a total novice at this. Right now bashing a plastic Revell Constitution into a brandywine frigate using basswoodand scratch pieces. My advice to a newbie would be, plan to paint your first model. Being able to use putty and filler or wood patches that you can then fare off and paint saves much frustration. Once you develop some skills then you can show your work.

I'm a total novice at this. Right now bashing a plastic Revell Constitution into a brandywine frigate using basswoodand scratch pieces. My advice to a newbie would be, plan to paint your first model. Being able to use putty and filler or wood patches that you can then fare off and paint saves much frustration. Once you develop some skills then you can show your work.

Remember that after the mid 1800s many ships had iron fixed axles that the yards sat on. They didn't rise and fall but were fixed in position.

Remember that after the mid 1800s many ships had iron fixed axles that the yards sat on. They didn't rise and fall but were fixed in position.

Thanks. Amazing build. I love the brass look.

Thanks. Amazing build. I love the brass look.

This question doesn't belong in this forum, but it follows the string that is here: the navy frigates began getting metal rails and cages over the deck hatches. What color are they? I see the Warrior's are brass, but I doubt the rest were. The Sabine has railing all over the place. It looks light (meaning not black) in photos, but I would assume it was painted rather than kept as brightwork. Any ideas?

I believe the Constitution build referred to is this one, starting at post 469. Exquisite work indeed.
 
http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/11935-uss-constitution-by-xken-model-shipways-scale-1768/page-24

I'm a total novice at this. Right now bashing a plastic Revell Constitution into a brandywine frigate using basswoodand scratch pieces. My advice to a newbie would be, plan to paint your first model. Being able to use putty and filler or wood patches that you can then fare off and paint saves much frustration. Once you develop some skills then you can show your work.

Hi All, here is my first build log, of the excellent kit from Bluejacket Shipcrafters.  
 
My goal is to build this OOB (out of the box), no scratch building, evaluate the instruction booklet, the plans and the materials and post my comments as I progress.  There may be some typos in the booklet, some areas that may be confusing and some construction issues.  
 
However, as you can see from the pictures of the contents , this is a quality kit in all aspects.  
 
Thank you for viewing and I hope you will enjoy this journey with me. 
 
Duff

A hundred and thirty years ago today, USS Independence was in dry dock at Mare Island. She had been floated in on October 30th.
 

 
Nearly thirty years later, in 1915, she was burned and scrapped.
 

 
This is an interesting interior view of her during her time as a receiving ship in Mare Island. Note the truss of the large roof built over her, as well as the hammocks stored in the hammock rails and the three light guns in the gun ports. I believe they are Hotchkiss Revolving Cannons, probably in 37mm.
 

 
A nice color shot of her after they painted her light grey. She wasn’t the only receiving ship to be painted this way, USS Dale was as well.
 

 
A nice shot of her stern to round things out. This gives a good look at the molding on her stern and quarter galleries as well as the laurel wreath badges. It also illustrates an interesting quirk in the design. The quarter galleries aren’t level with the upper deck. Rather, they’re placed half a deck lower, which you can see compared to the eight (8!) stern chase ports. As I haven’t seen this on any of the other liners, and the sail plan of Independence shows them lined up with the decks, I believe it’s a result of the razee-ing process. They probably looked awkward so high up, especially compared to normal US frigates which carried them below the level of the spar deck.
 

 

i'm building the Sabine to represent the ship that ended up getting scrapped here in Rockland in 1880 because parts of the ship are all over town. The billethead is indoors at the art museum. Some of the hull timbers are in the old marine rail at the snow yard, the gavels at our courthouse are made from Sabine wood, and two of the deckhouses survive. The midship galleyhouse and a queer little wheelhouse looking thing. It seems for the duration of the war the Sabine was flushdeck with house midships and forward. While her sister Santee was armed with two decks full of broadside guns, the Sabine sported for and aft pivots. The Sabine had an interesting "bridge" over the wheel I would assume for officers: 
    After the war she got a poopdeck. I think the funny little wheelhouse in town is one of the pieces from under the poop. I'm still wondering about the stern pivot on the poop roof. in this shot of the Santee (?) look at the pivot in the forground: is that thing sitting on a roof?

Charlie and Talos, you both are providing great stuff for my Sabine build. I'm done with deck furniture- scratch built the 10 dahlgren guns- now I'm getting to the houses, and the closed bow. Charlie posted some great shots of the Sabine bow. Thanks. By the way, the Sabine's billethead is on display here in Rockland at the Farnsworth museum.

Actually, Santee was built with the pivots too. You can see her aft and forward pivot ports in various pictures. Silverstone lists her as being armed from the start with 64-pounder shot and shell guns fore and aft. These were the biggest guns in the inventory by weight at the time, weight 20 cwt more than the early, weak 10” (not the Dahlgren, the Paixhan’s -style gun), 106 cwt total. The X-inch Dahlgren, at least the original model of it, weighs just slightly more at 107 cwt. I did a drawing of it which you can see on the previous page of this thread. It was that big to enable it to fire solid shot, double-shot the gun, etc. The lighter shell guns of the same caliber (8”) were intended to  mostly fire the lighter shells, though they could fire solid shot in a pinch if they had to. The 64-pdrs were limited to only a few ships, mostly these and the paddle-wheel steamers where they needed the extra punch to make up for the lack of guns due to the paddle boxes.
 
Speaking of paddle-wheelers, the bridge on Sabine in those pictures is called a flying bridge. They were an evolution of a bridge structure placed between the wheels of a side-wheeler where a Captain could have a good view. Previously Captains had their spot at the quarterdeck so they could see all of their rigging and sails clearly, but this was becoming less important with steamers. Flying bridges were getting popular in the Civil War era, you can see them on a variety of vessels, including steam sloops and gunboats.
 
With regards to the poop deck and aft pivot gun, that decking is not robust enough to take a X-inch Dahlgren’s weight and recoil. You’ll also notice the dark band on the mast right about level with the railing. That’s where the spanker boom attaches to the mast, there’s zero room for a cannon under it, it’s waist high. The last shot you have is indeed one of Santee when she’s a training ship armed with X-inch Dahlgrens fore and aft and a set of VIII-inch Dahlgrens on her upper deck (plus it looks like a Parrott up front). In this uncropped version of the picture, you can see the pivot wheels for the aft pivot resting on the deck. Also look all the way in front behind the Parrot and you can see the interior of Santee’s forward pivot port.

 
Interestingly, this shot of Santee roofed over only shows the rear pivot port (the double-wide window aft) and blank planking up front. I imagine they replanked that area because the forward pivot port would be a long, structurally weak part to mount the roof on.

 
Here’s a shot of Santee (left) and Constitution during the War. Santee’s forward pivot port is open.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.33945/
 
Found this while I was looking up information today. Apparently one of Sabine’s 6.4” (100-pounder) Parrott Rifles survives in Michigan as a monument. http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=98250 She might even be the large Parrott rifle we see sticking out of Sabine’s aft pivot port in this picture.
 
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cwpb.03821/ (be sure to download the full-size picture to zoom in. Also note the Royal Navy paddle-wheeled warship back there with the boats on top of the boxes and that very distinctive mid-century Royal Navy quarter gallery and stern design. You can also see guys standing on Sabine’s flying bridge in that picture, helping you to place it exactly)
 
Random unrelated picture of Saratoga I came across today too.

i'm building the Sabine to represent the ship that ended up getting scrapped here in Rockland in 1880 because parts of the ship are all over town. The billethead is indoors at the art museum. Some of the hull timbers are in the old marine rail at the snow yard, the gavels at our courthouse are made from Sabine wood, and two of the deckhouses survive. The midship galleyhouse and a queer little wheelhouse looking thing. It seems for the duration of the war the Sabine was flushdeck with house midships and forward. While her sister Santee was armed with two decks full of broadside guns, the Sabine sported for and aft pivots. The Sabine had an interesting "bridge" over the wheel I would assume for officers: 
    After the war she got a poopdeck. I think the funny little wheelhouse in town is one of the pieces from under the poop. I'm still wondering about the stern pivot on the poop roof. in this shot of the Santee (?) look at the pivot in the forground: is that thing sitting on a roof?

i'm building the Sabine to represent the ship that ended up getting scrapped here in Rockland in 1880 because parts of the ship are all over town. The billethead is indoors at the art museum. Some of the hull timbers are in the old marine rail at the snow yard, the gavels at our courthouse are made from Sabine wood, and two of the deckhouses survive. The midship galleyhouse and a queer little wheelhouse looking thing. It seems for the duration of the war the Sabine was flushdeck with house midships and forward. While her sister Santee was armed with two decks full of broadside guns, the Sabine sported for and aft pivots. The Sabine had an interesting "bridge" over the wheel I would assume for officers: 
    After the war she got a poopdeck. I think the funny little wheelhouse in town is one of the pieces from under the poop. I'm still wondering about the stern pivot on the poop roof. in this shot of the Santee (?) look at the pivot in the forground: is that thing sitting on a roof?

Charlie and Talos, you both are providing great stuff for my Sabine build. I'm done with deck furniture- scratch built the 10 dahlgren guns- now I'm getting to the houses, and the closed bow. Charlie posted some great shots of the Sabine bow. Thanks. By the way, the Sabine's billethead is on display here in Rockland at the Farnsworth museum.

Charlie and Talos, you both are providing great stuff for my Sabine build. I'm done with deck furniture- scratch built the 10 dahlgren guns- now I'm getting to the houses, and the closed bow. Charlie posted some great shots of the Sabine bow. Thanks. By the way, the Sabine's billethead is on display here in Rockland at the Farnsworth museum.

Charlie and Talos, you both are providing great stuff for my Sabine build. I'm done with deck furniture- scratch built the 10 dahlgren guns- now I'm getting to the houses, and the closed bow. Charlie posted some great shots of the Sabine bow. Thanks. By the way, the Sabine's billethead is on display here in Rockland at the Farnsworth museum.

Charlie and Talos, you both are providing great stuff for my Sabine build. I'm done with deck furniture- scratch built the 10 dahlgren guns- now I'm getting to the houses, and the closed bow. Charlie posted some great shots of the Sabine bow. Thanks. By the way, the Sabine's billethead is on display here in Rockland at the Farnsworth museum.

Nice I didn't realize the quality of the images on LOC are so much higher. Looking at the billethead scrolling comparisons on Sabine vs Santee, they are similar but perhaps a bit different. Is it safe to say scroll work was different of every ship of the time or did sister ships have essentially the same scroll design depending on who commissioned the work?

Many ships had the stripe removed during the war to help hide on blockade. With the all-black hull it was much harder to spot the ships in low light. This included ships like Farragut's squadron of sloops and gunboats pulled from the blockade and sent up the Mississippi. They did this back during the War of 1812 as well. I think President had her stripe painted out when she was trying to slip out to see past the British blockade.
 
This wasn't universal though, you can see pictures of Santee and Constitution on training duty at the Naval Academy still having their stripes, so when you get to the 1870s it wasn't that the stripe was brought back, more that they weren't involved in war at the time. You see the short-lived ships built at the end of the war like Congress using it. Macedonian doesn't seem to get her stripe back during the war after her time on the blockade, as seen in photographs, while most of the photos of Pensacola from the war I've seen show her with a stripe. It's possible she kept hers since she wasn't operating close in-shore like other ships.
 
Then sometime by the 1880s they had switched navy-wide to an all-black scheme with a narrow white stripe along the upper hull and a narrow one on the divide between hull and copper. The only exception was Constitution, which I've seen in pictures in the 1880s and 1890s with the stripe still in place, but she was already a heritage ship by that point.

So I have a question what led to the change in ship colors from the 1840s to the 1860s and 70s namely the removal of the typical white stripe in exchange for all black sides or with narrow white lines like saratoga. Then some ships like Tennessee who never had a white strip got one added during the 1870s when it seems the navy was going for a more traditinal appearance. But curious if there was a navywide change or did some ships still keep the stripe alongside those who didn't. Was there a system or was it random.

Well here's a wrench in my Sabine build. I want to recreate her configuration late in her career and came across this! It seems she acquired a full quarterdeck after the civil war. Is there a pivot gun up there? She keeps her pivot guns until 1876. If I build her with this deck, did she have window ports aft? I found a new London photo of her stern that shows only one row of windows. Hmmm.
Early Photos -- Portsmouth - Image 10.pdf

Well here's a wrench in my Sabine build. I want to recreate her configuration late in her career and came across this! It seems she acquired a full quarterdeck after the civil war. Is there a pivot gun up there? She keeps her pivot guns until 1876. If I build her with this deck, did she have window ports aft? I found a new London photo of her stern that shows only one row of windows. Hmmm.
Early Photos -- Portsmouth - Image 10.pdf