rtwpsom2

Started work on a new project, the extreme clipper Witch of the Wave, built in 1851. She was designed and built by George Reynes of Portsmouth, NH. She was originally owned by Glidden & Williams of Boston. Oddly enough, Gerorge Reynes son George Jr also built a packet freighter by the same name in 1856 in the same yard his father built this one in, so there is the possibility to get confused. Witch of the Wave was quite long lived for an extreme clipper, sailing for at least 34 years. She set only one record, her 1855 passage from Calcutta, India to Boston, MA in 102 days. She was quite beautiful even by standards of the day. A great deal of attention had been paid to the details of her workmanship and the quality of her fittings. Her cabins were fitted out with rare woods of curious workmanship and expensive furnishings. She had a library of over 100 books. Her figurehead was that of a beautiful woman holding aloft a scarf as she glides across the waves, with gilded branches and leaves stretching out behind her that grow to wrap around the hawse holes. She also had occuli, painted eyes on each side of her bowspirit commonly found on ships involved in the tea trade. This log isn't intended to be anything but a log of how I do stuff. Others do stuff differently and use different tools and concepts to do them. I'm not saying they aren't right, or that my ideas are better than theirs. I'm only trying to show how I go about it. I've worked in SolidWorks professionally since about 2006 and have done some WWII era warship models for Dragon Models and some CAD models of airframes for a company that restores WWII era fighter aircraft. So I'm posting this with the idea that you guys might be interested in how I do things. The quid pro quo is that I am hoping you guys can share your knowledge about ships where I am lacking, and I have been able to ask a few things in the forum already, for which I'm grateful. That said, I am hoping this doesn't come across as me being stuck up about how I do things or that I feel superior to others in my skills and knowledge-base. I do things my way and steal ideas from everyone else when I don't know how to do something. You might notice that EdT's work on Young America is something I consider highly influential. This is where I started, research-wise. This was the first hard data I found on WotW. It comes from The Search for Speed Under Sail; 1700-1855 by Howard I. Chappelle. The book is 10" tall x 8" wide so unfolded this layout was 10" x 16", a pretty decent size to work with for a scan. Fortunately I happen to have a large format flatbed scanner which can do 11" x 17" at 12,000 DPI. The resulting image was 18528 x 12408 pixels. I cropped a part of it here for you to imagine how large the full size image (zoom for effect). Needless to say it would be a little unwieldy in this format so I had some work to do on it. Here you see the occuli and her figurehead. The first problem is that the plan and profile images were split on two pages. Fortunately the image didn't go down into the gutter of the spine so I had nice clean edges to work with. In Photoshop I cut out pieces of the image and pasted them into a new document. I then lined them up using the grid and rotate layer command. Here is the profile image done. The processes I'm describing were done for all images, I'm just showing a couple quick reference images in order to save time and space. This is apretty lengthy process by itself and should probably have it's own discussion. The next part was a little more involved. There was minor warping all over the image. Fortunately there were tons of grid lines that I knew should be straight. I had to use the warp transform tool on the parts to get them into some semblance of straight and true lines. Needless to say this wasn't easy and took me about an hour for each view. The fore/aft view wasn't as hard because I didn't have to stitch two halves together, but it still got straightened up. Here is the plan view done. Next I used the sketch picture tool under sketch tools in SolidWorks to insert the resulting images into a new part. I added relevant geometry and used the dimensions I knew to scale the image up to the proper size. I found out that the frame stations were on 32" centers which did not diminish near the ends. I then added in more geometry for the individual frame stations. Next I created a new sketch on the midship plane and added the hull lines and some waterline geometry. And after that the plan view with buttock lines. The resulting work in 3D. Next I added in some rudimentary sketches for the bowspirit and jib boom. This gave me a rough overall length of 273' to 274'. The next thing I wanted to focus on was the fact that I didn't have a midship cross section to work with, only small sections of individual parts like the keelsons and garboard. A midship cross section is important, as it will help you lay out geometry and understand the interactions of the pieces more easily. So I created this one to get a general idea of how she laid out. Here you can see her rather unique keelson setup. Her sister keelsons were fayed to the floor and transitioned into her 4.5" floor ceilings. Next was adding planes for each frame station. I accidentally named the first plane m when it should have been l but I fixed that later on. The garboard is 7" thick at midships but thins out to 4" at the stem and stern. The frame angle varies from about 86º at the stem to 18.5º at midships, then back to 87º at the stern. After doing some number crunching I came up with a rabbet line, shown here in blue. In this view we are looking down the centerline of the ship from just above the baseline so you can see how it warps. And then I added a bearding line for the keel, again highlighted in blue. Here we are on the horizontal baseline of the keel, looking at it from just right of centerline. If the above rabbet line is the warp, this curve would be the weft. SolidWorks finds it easier to loft a surface if you maintain some uniformity to it's geometry. I intend to do this in one surface if I can, so I am making each frame loft section full height. It might make more sense once I'm done. Trust me, I'm a professional. Here I've finished adding in the port side lines. As before, all lines go from the baseline up to the 36' line. These line remain unsmoothed as yet. I will start smoothing them once all the lines are drawn. Looking from an isometric viewpoint, you can see where the bottom edge of the lines are constrained to the rabbet line (red arrows). That will give us a good start for smoothing later. The blue arrow indicates a good example of how the lines are not smooth yet. Even a well controlled spline won't always do exactly what you told it to and takes some coaxing. Aft of midships, I run into the rather small problem of having to draw lines on the starboard side of the ship. The solution is rather easy, a simple mirror command, which necessitates we also add a centerline. Work on the lines nears completion. Added in a rough estimate of the transom, this is probably not final. The green color is an approximation of the color of Zinc Chromate, the paint used on the insides of aircraft during WWII to curb corrosion. The parts template I use for work has this color as standard, so just ignore it. Or don't, you're an adult, you can do what you want. Added in planes to add in sketches for the buttock lines. I noticed that when I put the scan in for the reference image I forgot to scale it horizontally. The blue plane lines should line up with the tick marks on the scan. When you scan a drawing to put into CAD like this you need to scale it not only vertically but horizontally as well, and make sure the two are not linked. Line drawings scanned from books are never scaled perfectly one to one in both axis. Here is the first buttock line. I added in a spline with the same number of control points as there were frames. I then selected a control point and one of the frame lines and used the pierce constraint. The control point of the spline is now connected to the frame line as if it "pierces" through the control point. This let's us compare the model shape against the drawn buttocks lines. The closer I can get the buttock lines to match the lines in the scan, the more accurate the hull will be. The second line is added and what I am seeing is that the frame lines and buttock lines from the scan are pretty good so far. Once all the buttock lines are in you can see that me not scaling the lines horizontally is probably causing some issues, since the gap gets worse the further out from centerline you get. I'm probably going to have to adjust the horizontal scale of that front view image again and redo all the frame lines. Just to check, I moved the planes I created outwards until they lined up with the wrongly scaled front view to see how the change would affect the buttock lines and the result says, "Yep, you're gonna have to fix em." I added the 39' 8" width in as a couple of reference lines mirrored across the centerline. Then I edited the picture to scale it properly. Remember to uncheck the item in the red box to ensure it doesn't just scale the whole image. Here's something I do a lot when I am tracing images for a loft. I offset the spline by just larger than than the scanned line is. In this case the line I scanned is scaling out to around 3/4" thick so I offset at 1/2 inch in each direction (bi-directional) and check the offset geometry under construction to make the outside lines into construction or reference lines. Here's a close up of the result, you can see how it is helpful to get right down the centerline. Since I know the lines in the drawings I scanned are pretty good, I am going to start the smoothing process. This starts by selecting the main spline and selecting "Show Curvature" in the properties manager. You get a series of lines called a Curvature Comb that you can use to check your spline. You want a smooth comb without these kinks in it when you're done. Next is to add dimensions to control points. These are already constrained vertically so the only way they can move is horizontally. Controlling them with numbers is the easiest way for me to smooth the curve. Here you can see we have a couple of bad spots but overall it's not terrible. Sometimes the result isn't a beautiful comb where it is exactly the same thickness throughout, in this case I'm working on frame Y which is in the transition area between the concave curve at the prow and the convex curve amidships. That little dent about 2/3rds of the way up is the remnants of the prow's concavity. Usually you prefer to see something line frame g, which is straighter as it approaches the bow and begins to curve in a more uniform manner the higher you go. Smoothing is coming along, but is really tedious so to distract myself I have added some details to midship section. Lower planking was 4" x 14" up to the turn of the bilge. Turn of the bilge is a rather arbitrary term so I put the change where I thought it should be. From there to her plank sheer the planking was 5.5" x 7". The width of the wales planks is only 7 inches, compared to the 14 inches of the the lower planks, this is because the curve becomes more pronounced and the 14" planks are too wide to accommodate the curve. I might still pull out a couple of those lower planks and move the wales down and in a little more, I haven't decided yet, but the curve looks a little to much for those last two. Her plank sheer is 5 inches think and her main rail is 5.5" x 20". Nothing else is dimensioned so the rest of this is best guess to get the known dimensions to agree with each other. Her bulwark planking is 3" x 6" and only on the outside of the hull. Inside her bulwarks are open up to the rack rail. She has 4" thick clamps above and below the main rail, these fill the gap between the main rail and the monkey rail (fancy rail). I'm not sure about the waterway, in the description by Bruzelius they are said to be 14" square but this seems a bit excessive. They would end up cutting away a quarter of the material when they cut the molding into it. It also doesn't leave a great deal of open space between the plank sheer and the rack rail, but that seems to be an aesthetic thing to me so I'm not sure if that's more than just my opinion. The next question I need to clear up is the masts location and rake angle. Most of my work is based on the Chappelle drawings, so I kind of default to his being right most of the time, but here I have to disagree with him. Bruzelius describes the rake angles of the masts in inches to the foot, while Chappelle drew them in angular degrees. In other words, Bruzlius says the fore mast is 1.25 inches rake to the foot. If you draw a triangle with one side 12 inches and the other 1.25 inches, you get a rake angle of 5.95º. Chappelle has drawn his masts at 1.25º directly. In my drawing each mast has two lines. The solid line represents the rake angle in inches per foot and the dashed line in degrees. I think we can agree that Chappelle made the common mistake of replacing triangular dimensions with angular dimensions. The second question is location and here I think Chappelle might be right but I'm not sure. Bruzelius describes the ship as being 202 feet between perpendiculars, but Chappelle describes it as 204'. The reason for the discrepancy is the length between the frames. The original waterlines, when scaled to 204' show a spacing between frames of 32". But at 202' the gap is 31.9". a gap of 31.9 inches seems implausible, so 204' is the more likely length between perpendiculars. Bruzelius' dimensions for the mast locations are 45' from front perpendicular to the fore, 67' from fore to main, and 53' from main to mizzen, with 37 remaining between mizzen and aft perpendicular. Chappelle, however has the given dims as 45', 68', 53'6", and 37'6". These numbers are in better keeping with the ratio numbers listed in Crother's Clipper book. The below drawing shows the masts located according to Bruzelius. The image below that has them located according to Chappelle. These changes, overall, will make a little more room at the front of the main deck, but are going to make the poop deck a bit more cramped. So, overall, this is where work has progressed to after about a weeks work. If you guys see any errors, please let me know, I'd rather fix them now than find them later on.

Thank you for checking and for the offer 7of9. I appreciate it. Roger was able to get me some pictures of the table. I'm thinking I might compile it into a table to pay on here, but it won't be for a few days. Anyway thanks again.

Thanks for the help.

Just a side curiosity question, regarding the non-grooved method you are discussing, how does it work near the stem and stern when the loft of the hull form can start approaching angles greater than 45º? At 45º a 7 inch garboard would be rabbeted 5". On the piece I'm working on, the forward most frame (probably a cant frame at this point) is at 82º from horizontal, would the rabbet be 6-15/16" deep? Or did they thin it out fore and aft?

You just need to scale your model up so the bamboo is the right size.

Cool, thanks Wayne.

Thanks Mark, so when it says the bowspirit is 28' outside the inner stem, that is a straight line length and not horizontal (e.g. parallel to the keel)?

If a spar plan says 35' outside the cap for the jibboom, is that measured horizontally or parallel to the centerline of the boom? I'm assuming it's parallel, but the distance to the cap was 28' from the FP, which is horizontal, so I thought I'd just check.

Noice! Thank you Roger!

I just spent $30 on this version, I'm not spending another $33 for that one page.

That's pretty much what I'm doing (albeit without the knowledge of the previous editions). If anyone with an earlier edition could chime in, that would be nice, too.

These are the references I am working with. The cross section isn't the exact ship, there are no references for that ship, this was a sister ship launched by the same builder/designer just a few months earlier than the one I am working on. It doesn't show the smoothing, it just shows the board layout. This list of notes was taken from the table of offsets, the only document that I actually have that I know is specifically concerning this hull. I can only guess as to what it means, and my guess is that it means the depth, e.g. at the rabbet line.

Most likely, yes. I'm uncertain of the dimensions but there should be a keelson and a rider, both approximately 14s x 24m.

Thank you for that. I think that unless someone chimes in with other thoughts I will probably go with this as the design.

Thanks for checking Meddo, I appreciate it.

So Jaager, you think it would be more like this with the light blue line being the surfaced line? This number and size of DS's seems more reasonable. The rabbet line is let in 4 inches at midships and 3.5 inches at the front and rear. the garboard strake is 8s x 14.5m 1st diminishing strake is 6s x 14m 2nd is 4.5s x 14m the solid gray curved line in the image is the Mold Line the dashed black line below it is the ML offset 4 inches, e.g. the standard plank thickness The solid blue line is the dubbed off line

I know, this is just a basic layout for board sizes and to get a pattern for the floors.

I'm working up a layout for a friend and wanted to see if I have it sized correctly. The Keel is 14s x 40m and apparently the shoe is counted in the sizing. I don't know the shoe thickness, but best guess is 4 inches. The rabbet line is let in 4 inches at midships and 3.5 inches at the front and rear. the garboard strake is 8s x 14.5m 1st diminishing strake is 6s x 14m 2nd and third are 5s x 14m the solid gray curved line in the image is the Mold Line the dashed black line below it is the ML offset 4 inches, e.g. the standard plank thickness The two "guessed at" factors in this are: 1. the size and number of diminishing strakes 2. the distance between the top of the keel and the Mold Line. The drawing I have scaled with the bottom of the shoe being at 40 inches below the mold line, but that doesn't jibe with the overall keel dimensions. The overall keel would have to be around 44" it would have to a bevel rabbet.

Echo Point Books & Media

I already have, am waiting to hear back on that front. And the guys on here recommended the book to me, so I will be a bit irate if they themselves haven't got a copy.

Well, it's probably only glaring to me because I need the info that has been omitted, but... Anyway, I just got a copy of this fine book and am greatly impressed with it, however I have come across an error that I am hoping others can help me with. Can you guys look in your copy and check out Table 9.1 on pages 145 and 146. In my book page 145 should be the first part of the table and page 146 should be the second part, but both pages are copies of page 2 of the table. I would especially like those with a hardcover to check, as I have the soft cover and it might be different in different editions. Also, if anyone does have page one of table 9.1 could you scan or photograph it and send it my way, I could really use some info on Great Republic from it. Thanks

AntonyUK, do you have drawings and a scale you are currently modeling?

Use the method that EdT uses on his Young America. He uses a stick sized to two dimensions of the block, drills two holes in it for each sheave, then moves down and drills two holes for another, etc. until he has 6 or 7. then he starts notching in between to shape them and eventually cuts off each indivdual one. Look at part 253 on this page: https://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/3453-young-america-by-edt-extreme-clipper-1853/&page=89

It's interesting seeing the different materials people use to make their personal use tools and jigs from. I've seen wood, mdf, aluminum, and 3D printed plastic before, but never acrylic. Looks sexy.

I think CNC would be better to make the parts of the model, instead of using it after the parts are assembled. You could use EdT's idea of drilling the iron bolt holes and using those as pins to align your parts during assembly and then there would be no fairing to do to after the fact, maybe just a little light sanding here and there.