Modeler12

Jay,

If you can wait till tomorrow I will try and get you some more detailed pictures onboard the ship.

That would be great Henry. Thanks for the offer.

 

I mentioned in my build log that the plans call for a tackle with heart shaped blocks. I don't have any but I do have some deadeyes that are shaped that way. Perhaps they might work, but I will certainly wait until you can clarify this for me.

 

I like to add that I was planning to put a fairly large eyebolt in the waterway half way between the two cannonades. Is that about the right location? How are the blocks attached to this? A hook or more permanent?

The port main futtock lines are in place along with a larger ring that connects them to the 'Bentnick' shroud.

This is the first time I found a mistake in the plans. The sketch above calls for a 1/8 inch thimble. I tried that on the fore mast and found it to be way too small. In fact, the 1/8 inch for the thimble is the outside diameter. So I made some copper rings instead.

I still like to see more details about how the Bentnick shroud is attached to the waterway. I don't have any 5/32" hearts and may end up using some deadeye hearts that look about the right size.

Boy, you guys take Australia Day serious with all that beer drinking.

I see you even take it out to sea.

Nice touch with the torch, Jay.  You are becoming a real master.  I still occasionally evaporate the fitting I am trying to solder - must remember light passes are all that is needed.  I never thought of taping things to the stone - I have an old ceramic tile in the basement I may need to drag out for futures - still have all those sail hanks to make for the jib sails.

 

Loving the build!

 

Bob

Bob, no need for an old ceramic tile. Just for fun I took a steel pizza pan from the kitchen and used it. In order to hold the little brass piece to the copper 'rod', I used a straight pin and a magnet to hold it in place.

It took a bit longer because of the thicker copper and it also used more of the paste flux, but it worked.

I show the result along with my second futtock stave to show that my first try worked as well as my second one. It was not an accident.

Notice also the extra glob on the brass piece. I have to be careful where I put the flux/paste.

That's impressive Jay. I would have burned the tape first.

 

Harvey

That was my first reaction, Harvey. But when I actually tried it with this thin wire, I was surprised to see only a slight scorching of the tape edge.

When I did the parts above, I held the torch such that the flame was towards the top, away from the tape. The pass with the flame took less than a second for each intersection.

 

The picture above makes it look like I held the flame from the top towards the tape. That is not what I really did.

After I posted my question I did find a couple pictures. But I would still like more details if anyone has some.

 

Does anyone have a good picture of how the futtock shrouds on the USS Constitution are attached to the 'Bentinck' shrouds?

My plans call for a ring (actually a 1/8" thimble) but that does not seem right. The five futtock shrouds and the Bentinck shroud barely fit through a 1/8 inch hole, let alone a thimble of that outside dimension.

 

I believe the ring is larger but how much?

Also I would like to see a picture of how this is rigged to the deck, the waterways, in particular.

The closest I can come up with is shown below.

I am not happy with the way the futtock shrouds go around the stave. The drawing shows futtock 'extensions', which I took to mean a metal part with eyes at both ends for the shrouds. 

I decided to try this approach with some brass wire. Using a fixture I made some time ago for other loops and things, I bent the wire into short sections. I needed five.

 

Then I tried to silver solder these to the futtock stave. It did not work well. As soon as I tried to add another one, the solder came loose on the one before. Back to the drawing board and I found that I should solder all of them at once. Below you can see that I simply taped the pieces to the stone slab, added a tiny amount of solder paste (the grey stuff in the picture), and hit it ever so briefly with the torch.
You might think the torch would ignite the tape, but this goes so fast that the edge of the tape was barely scorched.

 

 

The result seems OK. Before and after blackening.

 

I will use this one for the starboard fore mast and make another for the main mast.

The ends of the five futtock shrouds come together and go through a ring. See diagram above and the picture below.

The shrouds are 0.025 inch diameter, and then there is the 'Bentinck shroud', the one that ties all of the above to the waterways.

It is 0.040 inch diameter. So, how much of a ring size do I need?

 

I hate to do this, but the idea is shown in my simple calculation below. And sure enough a ring with an inside diameter of 1/8 inch worked fine.

 

I will move the ring up to its proper position and again glue this together before rigging the Bentinck shroud to the waterways.

I have to do the same thing from the other side and wonder about interference. Hence I will hold off with details.

Evening. The futtock shrouds are in place for the port fore mast.

Things are getting 'busy'; something I don't like, but Connie seems to have no problem with all those lines.

She must be a stage girl, a comedian even.

 

Her shrouds on starboard are still bundled together (like a real dance girl) in the upper right hand corner.

Once they come down with futtocks, etc. things will be really jumping in the joint.

After adding the shrouds on the port side, I attached the batten at the bottom and then did the futtock staves higher up.

I used pieces of .013 inch thick brass, blackened. To hold them in place and to allow me to adjust the horizontal spacing of the shrouds, I tied each with some thin sewing thread with some CA glue. After each shroud is tied with the thread, I will use my handy end snippers to trim the stave.

The sketch on page 7 of the plans really helps.

If you only use furled sails you don't need the dimensions. Go to the thread about furled sails and you can see how it can be done.

For full sails on the USS Constitution by Model Shipways the plans gave drawings to scale. I am surprised that you did not get them for your build.

Jay,

A quick question (or two ... ) at this point, if I may.

 

Are you blackening your brass-work to create an aged effect ... ???

... or is it more to match with Connie's over-all black/white colour scheme ??

 

My reason for interrupting is that, for my own build, I am intending her to eventually (one day!!!) be docked with my brother ... who lives not quite 1.5km from the ocean in Mandurah, WA (No, NOT Washington state !!! Down here in Orstraya).  

I'm thinking that the high salt/saline atmosphere will very quickly (1-2 years) patinate(??) naturally.

Steve, I am blackening the brass straps to match the real ship in Boston. I also will paint the wooden deadeyes for the same reason. On the port side, thus far, I did not like the alignment of the deadeyes and black paint might hide my mistakes a bit.

I found that the patina works fine for me (as long as I clean the metal first) and it is easier than using paint on these small parts. In the beginning I did paint some using an airbrush, but with the primer first and then two coats of paint was taking a lot longer (not to mention cleaning the gun).

As far as letting Mother Nature do it? I cannot imagine that the brass would turn black in time. But the bottom of the hull might turn green.

Hello Jay, I have noticed that you seem to have good experience with blackening brass. It appears that I am going to have to use brass wire for my chainplates on my CW Morgan. The real ones are iron. The kit didn't have enough, and I'm deciding I will have to use the brass wire I have, but I want it of course to be black. Do you have a recomendation or a good proceedure for accomplishing this. I saw your video on using deadeyes but couldn't quite figure out what you used to make them black as well as wondering if it damages the wood deadeyes to saok them in the solution. Would appreciate your input. Also, thanks for your videos as they really help us novices.

I have done a fair amount of blackening of metals including mild steel, brass, copper and the pewter casting material used to make parts like canon barrels. There are several brands of compound on the market, but what I use was left over from my stain-glass work several years ago. For me it has worked nicely. I show a picture of the stuff below and it is still available through Amazon, for example.

If you do a search in the section about 'metal work, etc', you can find several threads on this forum that go into details. Here is one thread http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/1240-another-type-of-blackening-agent-and-some-experiments/?hl=%2Bblackening+%2Bmetals#entry23331

 

Thus far I have treated several wire 'strops' around wooden blocks and I have not had any problems (yet) with soaking the wood in the solution and rinse water. I just make sure the wood is dry before doing much else with it.

Allow me please, to add one more thought about scissors.

We all have several, including those that belong to the admiral.

Below are some I have used. You can see the end snippers that I referred to. It has the light blue handle.

Then there are large clumsy ones that are nice for cutting fabric but not trimming lines.

 

But the one I still like is the one with the sharp points. I have no idea where it came from.

The closest is the one with the blue handle. I got that from the web as a 'nose trimmer'.

Do you have some favorites? I know they come in all sorts of sizes and styles.

 

Yes, Micro Mark. I only mentioned MM.

These snippers are not cheap. $25 plus handling, etc.

They are also a bit delicate and I don't want to use them on steel, for example.

My son-in-law, who works in the electronics industry, wants one for cutting the ends of wires used in experimental circuit boards (one step beyond bread boards).

For Christmas my mother-in-law bought me a pair of end snippers from MM. Yes, I did not mean 'slippers'.

The cutting edges are not along the sides, like most trimmers, but at the very end.

I have used them a bit for making brass parts and also to trim up the loose bits and pieces after seizing lines.

I know they will come in handy to trim the ends of rat lines (I use the needle and thread technique).

 

I have done that with a pair of very small scissors, but did not like the clumsy nail trimmer.

Below are the before and after trimming pictures.

 

Now I am wondering what else I can do with this tool.

After putting that video together I thought I had the shrouds under control. The nine port main shrouds are grouped in threes. Here is the first set.

 

I had used some bees wax on the lanyards and that really shows as a greyish cast. Also when I pulled them through the deadeyes some of it flaked off like dandruff. I put one of them in the microwave for about 45 seconds, pulled the warm thread between my fingers and that helped to smooth things a little.

 

Close-up pictures also show other so-so situations, but from a distance only I will know (and now you, who read this).

The real USS Constitution has all of the deadeyes painted black. I am not sure if I want to keep the upper ones as is or also paint them.

 

I should add here that later I 'melted' the bees wax by pulling the lanyards through a hot-damp cloth that I had put in the microwave oven for one minute. It not only did a good job with the wax but it also took care of some of the kinks and coiling. (I learned that from making burritos with large tortillas).

Thanks Max,

I could have added one more thing and that is the alignment of the deadeyes. For this video I premade the two shrouds and proceeded from there. For an actual model the shroud lines would already be attached to the mast on top and the length would be adjusted at the deadeye at the bottom of the shroud.

To do this I have used a simple fixture shown below.

 

The two nails you see in the middle were used for some other shrouds higher up, so ignore them for now.

I take the fixture and slip it onto the bottom deadeye and clamp it in place. Then I put the top deadeye onto the nail and wrap the shroud around the groove in the deadeye. A drop of CA glue holds it in place and then I apply the seizings.

I hope this all makes sense because I only show the whole thing in place.

I am in the process of attaching more shrouds to my Connie and thought it would be good practice to make a mockup to show what I was doing.

Here is the result.

I have added another video to my collection. It has to do with attaching shrouds, deadeyes and lanyards to a ship model. I did this because I wanted some more practice what is coming up with my model.

I also posted this elsewhere.

Could you go through the boom at the tip?

When earlier I said that the picture would change when the main shrouds are installed, I was not quite right. The view did change when I added the two topmast backstays with the deadeyes, but the shrouds will be somewhat more to the right of the cannon.

The lines to the left coming down (out off focus) are the starboard main royal halliards. I have also added a small 'coil' for the flag halliard.

I am not sure this will help, but there is a video I made about seizing or whipping. As part of that I show how I strop a line to blocks and then apply the seizing.

 

Of course, there is also the use of wire for stropping. It all depends on the application.