JerseyCity Frankie

Most modern tall ship standing rigging is nearly always steel wire rope and thus its stable and can't stretch. But in the old days all rigging was natural fiber and it would stretch. Not only stretching as a result of strain placed upon it during use but also do to changing atmospheric conditions. Also it could shrink. So standing rigging had to be adjusted fairly regularly. 

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02488/flag_2488242b.jpg
 
I wish I could tell you more about this image. Its said to be a flag flown at tTrafalgar from the San Ildefonso. Further its said to have been flown over St Paul's Cathedral during Admiral Nelson's funeral.

Canons were made of wood tooth picks. Gun carriages are made of sheet styrene. Trucks were stretched sprue. The pommelion is brass rod inserted in a hole I drilled in the end. The swelling at the muzzle end and the ogee aft the trunion are each made of one turn of wire twisted on the underside. Fortunately there are only 14 of them. At this scale the breaching rope is going to be carpet or button thread.

I'm a big believer in planking your own boats over a wooden form. Its not that difficult. I had gone through the process of whittling solid wooden boats. I was dissatisfied with the "covered with a tarp" school of thought and gouging out the interior was difficult when the boat is this small. I tried the "squash" method with heated plastic. I tried the lift method. If your making a wooden boat of the correct shape anyway, why not plank over it? Then discard the wood form. With actual planks you get something more in scale in terms of hull thickness AND you get authentic clinker built texture. The planks in this photo are just thin strips of printer paper cut straight with no spauling. I have saran wrap over the form as a resist and white glue on the edge of each plank. Like an actual boat these paper boats are light and strong. Some of the other boats get a transome.

Thats the plan Druxey.  We shall see how it goes.  I think it will work out OK.  
 
Bill,
 
All laser cutters cut on an angle.  You can minimize it a lot but never get rid of it entirely.  Basically the laser is cone shaped as it travels through the lense that focus' it.  Much like how you would focus the sun through a magnifying glass.   So it gradually comes to a point.  If you focus that beam so the point ends in the center of the thickness of wood you can minimize the angle of cut but its hard to do.
 
So its just a matter of focusing well and the,
 
choosing the proper laser power for that thickness along with the most appropriate speed.  If you pick the slowest setting possible along with the least power possible to just cut through the wood,  then the Kerf will be as thin as possible......thus reducing the angle.
 
The angle is always more noticeable on thicker pieces which are few on a model.  So I enlarge them by 1% or 2% to compensate.  Once the laser char is removed with a sanding stick while you at the same time make a true 90 degree angle the part will be the appropriate size.  Its just a fact of life for laser cutters and all kit cut pieces.  But you can minimize it quite a bit with practice,  trial and error.
 
Chuck

My two cents is that they would certainly all have had bobstays. I don't want to put words in anyones mouth but I think we can all agree that the object of a cutters rig was to provide the maximum sail area to give the highest possible speed. I find it difficult to believe anyone would load a rig with all that canvas and such a long long bowsprit and then neglect such an important feature as the bobstay. I will concede its possible to omit a bobstay on a running bowsprit on a sailing vessel, but not if you want to have the maximum amount of sail on the rig. Here is a contemporary model of the Hawk 1777 showing a bobstay:  http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/66275.html

I cannot speak to how or why any particular set of plan were prepared. The model company my be in possession of specific information for that exact vessel. But attached are the pic's of English cutters I have in my records. They all have bobstays. I just cannot imagine such a long, rather thin spar being in effect "unstayed". It is especially hard to see how it would work considering the relative sizes of the head sail in a cutter rig. Something would have to counteract the upward pull of the sails.

A very small one, the Queensland maritime museum, on the south bank of Brisbane river.
This museum is dedicated to its true treasure----a river class frigate in dry dock, so there's really no much sightseeing for one aiming for sailing ship.
The models on display are, of course, Captain Cook's Endeavour, Bligh's Bounty, and its hunter Pandora.
Ohter relevant items are navigation instruments,
a sailor's locker filled with small arms, edged weapons and slop-like rags,
rope and sail making tools.
Really nothing else is worth noting, but they have many fine models under restoration, from Sovereign of the sea to cutty sark,
and their official website states that they have a plan to build an exclusive section for sailing ships.

If I had ANY of the series of these books I would not part with them. They are rather expensive and difficult to come by and these attributes are matched with spectacular comprehensive content that is beautiful. Its on my list of "if I ever win the lottery" things I would buy for myself if price was no object, in fact they would be near the top of the list.

The Port Side is at the same progress as the Starboard Side.
I don't make many words because the procedure is the same.
Here some photos of the current progress.

 

If I had ANY of the series of these books I would not part with them. They are rather expensive and difficult to come by and these attributes are matched with spectacular comprehensive content that is beautiful. Its on my list of "if I ever win the lottery" things I would buy for myself if price was no object, in fact they would be near the top of the list.

I am very fortunate to own two original ship paintings by Geoff Hunt, the artist that painted the book covers of the original series. 

Kevels use the same friction principle as Belaying Pins and Cleats do. The end of the working line is taken to the Pin, the Cleat or the Kevel and three figure eight turns are taken around the two projections each of these things have. Its assumed the line is under strain or will be under strain. When the strain comes on the line, friction occurs where the line crosses over itself at the center of each figure eight turn. There is also friction where the line makes the 180 degree turns around the projections, but the main holding power comes from the line being made to press down on itself at the center of those figure eight turns.

Kevels use the same friction principle as Belaying Pins and Cleats do. The end of the working line is taken to the Pin, the Cleat or the Kevel and three figure eight turns are taken around the two projections each of these things have. Its assumed the line is under strain or will be under strain. When the strain comes on the line, friction occurs where the line crosses over itself at the center of each figure eight turn. There is also friction where the line makes the 180 degree turns around the projections, but the main holding power comes from the line being made to press down on itself at the center of those figure eight turns.

This topic is covered pretty comprehensively in another thread here somewhere. In short, the flag is tied to a Flag Halyard that is run through a very small block or sheave at the very top of the mast. If its a sheave its set directly into the cap on the masthead. The flag halyard material is some of the thinnest line on the whole ship so on your model make it the thinnest stuff you have. its one long line that runs all the way up to the masthead then all the way back down to the deck, this way the flag can be set or struck by someone standing on the deck, you don't have to climb up there to get it. It will belay immediately aft of the aftermost line coming off the mast it is on. No other line coming off the mast in question will belay behind this line. Its the highest line on the mast so it will be the aftermost line on the pinrail.

Kevels use the same friction principle as Belaying Pins and Cleats do. The end of the working line is taken to the Pin, the Cleat or the Kevel and three figure eight turns are taken around the two projections each of these things have. Its assumed the line is under strain or will be under strain. When the strain comes on the line, friction occurs where the line crosses over itself at the center of each figure eight turn. There is also friction where the line makes the 180 degree turns around the projections, but the main holding power comes from the line being made to press down on itself at the center of those figure eight turns.

They strike me as odd ropes to have around too. If you need to have a purchase aloft, why not just put a line around the masthead over the Trestle Trees? I guess you would need twenty more feet of rope to do it that way, if you didn't have the tackles hanging there. And I suppose the fact that they are there on every ship speaks to the fact they must have tried getting along without them and came to the conclusion they were better to have than not.

In a remarkable coincidence I was just this very evening reading an account of the shelling of Hartlepool in Robert K Massie's excellent Castles of Steel. Reading it for the second time. Its even better than I remembered it. I think all MSW people interested in Steel Navy should certainly have it on their shelf.

Hi to all out there,
 
Just to let you all know a little of my history, I'm a widower (having lost my wife to cancer 4 years ago), am 66 years young and disabled, served in military uniform for over 36 years and am now retired, hence the start of this hobby, I used to be one of the directors at the Heugh Battery Museum, until I resigned to look after my wife in her last days, so I am now a volunteer there, and the Heugh Battery is where the first person in England to be killed duringf World War One, and we have been restoring it from a run down car park and 'vagrant' area since the year 2000, we are now open to the public, and have lots of artifacts (that you would expect from both World Wars) 'plug for the Museum', see us on www.heughbatterymuseum.com.
 
One of the artifacts we have acquired is the model of the HMS Warspite  (Queen Elizabeth Class Battleship), she was built in 1912, launched in 1915, the over the years went through a lot of refits. The model we got from the Imperial War Museum was in a terrible state when we received it, (lots of parts missing and broken) it turns out that she was originally (the model) built by some shipyard apprentices to a very good state, but when some of the refits took place, the model was also updated, only not always by the same apprentices and this shows.
 
We received the model in a massive wooden box (where she had been stored during the Second World War, (for safe keeping), evidently this box had not been opened since about 1940/42, so a decision was taken to restore her to her refit of 1942, so the hunt was now on to find both plans and help to  put her right again, we received her in July 2013, we then asked around the volunteers as to who would like to take on this mammoth project, after a lot of 'head scratching etc'., it was decided that three of us would do it, Glenn (myself) who would do the most of the metal work (as I have a full workshop including a Lathe and Milling machine along with other machines) and the repair and replacement of some of the parts (which we have to source), along with painting and all the other 'mundane' work, Ken who took on the job of project leader, and works very closely with me, and Allan, who only wanted to do the ' deck planking' and a really good job he is doing of it, including putting cotton between the planks to give the nice black line between them.
 
I am going to copy all this onto another page when I post some of the photos that we have taken, (as I'm not sure that I'm doing this right.
 
So folks, that's all for now, if anyone wants more information, please don't hesitate to contact me and I'll try my best to answer you, thank you for reading all this, I hope I have't 'bored' you all to tears,
 
Sargofagus
 
Thought I'd add some photos of the progress, we have taken loads of the parts we have been able to strip down, but there is lots of 'bits' that we are going to have to source, the plans we are using is a book produced in Poland and is in Polish (also in English) and this has helped us immensely, we have to work out the scale as the full size, then reduce it to 1/48th scale, (but it is working), if anyone out there has any 'better' plans that you would let us have this would be fantastic, we are restoring it to around the 1942 period. Thanks again for your interest,
 
Sargofagus 
 
OOps forgot to add the photos, (you can tell I'm new to this) lol
 
I'm the one on photos 11, and 12, Allan is the other person on the photos,
Thanks
 
 

Hello Sam welcome to Model Ship World. I see this is your first post, congratulations. Flying Fish is a nice subject too. I did a quick web search and found this amazing treasure trove of information: http://www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/News/BDA/BDA(1851-11-04).html
 
According to this source, the Fore is 70', the Main is 80' and the Mizzen is 59' long.
 
You have not mentioned the scale of the version you are building but if you know the scale, you should be able to do some simple math and come up with the measurement in inches the model yards should be.

Lettie stopped in Jersey City for fuel a month or so ago and I got a few snaps. Here is a shot showing the boltrope. I blew up the detail and inserted it in the oval inset.

Lettie stopped in Jersey City for fuel a month or so ago and I got a few snaps. Here is a shot showing the boltrope. I blew up the detail and inserted it in the oval inset.

Hi everyone. Ingomar's construction is nearing an end. This has been a very enjoyable and challenging ship to build. I hope I've made Hereshoff proud!
 
Ok, so, the bits that I've just completed are the railings on the stanchions and the boarding ladder. I've added more rigging and a red cove stripe to highlight the sheer line, as well as gluing the boarding ladder onto the hull.
 
Things still to do are very minor, but include finishing the davits, completing the simulated blocks in the rigging and hanging the three ships boats.
 
Hope you enjoy the photos.
 
All the best!

Hi all.  Thanks Steve, Bob, Piet and everyone for your Likes and comments.
 
Ingomar's rigging continues.  However, tonight, I was mucking around with the camera and accidentally took a silhouette shot.  Didn't look too bad, I thought; so I ended up taking a few more.  Anyhow, here's what Ingomar looks like when you're chasing shadows!
 
All the best, everyone!

Hi Bob, Nils and everyone for their likes and advice.   I'm still jury-rigging rigging all over the place in order to see what works and what doesn't look right.  Bob- I'm sorry, but at this small scale, I'm going to have go with a simplified rig, without the detail that you're able to achieve.  Sort of like sacrificing accuracy for what looks right.  
 
Here're the latest photos.
 
All the best!