JerseyCity Frankie

I'm so glad someone built a model of the Pennsylvania. Such an odd wrinkle of American maritime history, the story of this ships "career" deserves better distribution in the literature than it gets. I think there is a Currier and Ives print of her? Another reason I like this build is the nature of the cross section. A few years ago I built a very detailed model of the mast of a frigate that stands, with its base, 8' high. I have long contemplated building the section of hull contiguous with the shrouds associated with the mast. As it is now, the mast is stepped on a purpose built wooden stool and the model starts with the deadeyes and goes up but there is absolutely no framing planking or deck furniture of any kind, just the wooden stool.

This is the model as she sits now.

This is a few more photos of the mast.
 

Pre-Rigging the Tall Ship Model
By Peter Jaquith
 
Some ship modelers prefer to erect the masts, spars, and rigging in much the same sequence period ships were rigged (e.g. lower masts, lower shrouds, top masts, topmast shrouds, etc.).  Other ship modelers pre-rig the masts, spars, and sails with blocks and standing/running rigging components before final installation on the model.  The following notes describe the pre-rigging process as applied to the construction of my Topsail Schooner “Eagle” of 1847 build:
 
Rigging Strategy – My rigging strategy for the Topsail Schooner “Eagle” build was to install all possible eyebolts, blocks, standing/running rigging lines and components on the masts, spars, and sails prior to erection onboard the model.  Where appropriate, I constructed sail/spar assemblies to further complete rigging work on the bench prior to erection onboard the model.
Rigging Planning – Using a markup of the ship’s rigging plans, each rigging component/rigging line was identified and assigned to its installation stage with due consideration given to maintaining flexibility for onboard adjustment.  Once the plan review was completed, check lists were prepared by mast, spar, sail, and sail/spar assembly to track these installations.
Pre-Rigging the Gaffs & Booms – Boom and gaff pre-rigging included yard bands, eyebolts, parrel assemblies, blocks, and standing/running rigging lines associated with the respective spar.  Examples include boom sheet assemblies, boom sheet, boom topping lift, boom footropes, gaff throat and peak halyards, gaff vangs, and gaff topsail eyebolts and blocks.
Pre-Rigging the Topsail & Lower Yards – Topsail and lower yard pre-rigging included yard bands, eyebolts, parrel assemblies, blocks, and standing/running rigging lines associated with the respective spar.  Examples include yard trusses assembly; parrel assembly; jackstays; footropes; brace pendants; halyards; clewline, reef tackle, sheet, and bunt line blocks.
Pre-Rigging the Sails – Sail pre-rigging included running rigging blocks and lines associated with the respective sail.  Examples include sail hanks, mast hoops, halyards, downhauls, outhauls, inhauls, tacks, sheets, clewlines, bunt lines, and reef tackle.
Pre-Rigging the Masts – Mast pre-rigging included mast/cap bands, futtock shrouds, mast hoops, boom rest assemblies, mast coats, eyebolts, blocks, and the standing/running rigging associated with the respective mast. Examples include lower yard clevis assembly, lower shrouds, futtock shrouds, topmast shrouds, backstays, main and fore stays, throat and peak halyard blocks/runners, boom topping lift, yard lifts, yard brace blocks/runners, halyards, and buntline blocks.     
Sail & Spar Assemblies – The fore and main sails were assembled with their respective booms/gaffs, the fore topsail was assembled on its topsail yard, and the main gaff topsail was added to the aft mast assembly.  These assemblies allowed further completion of the running rigging on the bench top vs. onboard the model.
Rigging the Bowsprit & Jibboom – Head rigging (including bobstays, martingale stays, bowsprit guys, jibboom guys, and the bowsprit/jibboom footropes) was installed onboard the model prior to mast installation.  Tie in of the fore stay, jib stay, and fore topmast stay will be accomplished after fore mast installation.
Mast Erection & Standing Rigging Completion – Following mast erection on the model; the main triatic and topmast stays were tied off to the fore mast and the lower shrouds, backstays, and fore stays were tied off and secured with deadeyes and lanyards.  The head sails were fitted to the fore stays prior to their connection to the bowsprit/jibboom.  Additionally, ratlines were installed onboard the model.
Spar, Sail, & Running Rigging Completion – The remaining sails and sail/spar assemblies were installed onboard the model working from aft forward.  All the remaining running rigging associated with the sails and spars were tied off and completed in the same sequence.  Flags and rigging coils were added after completion of other rigging tasks.
 
While the pre-rigging strategy described above does require some up front planning; it significantly reduces onboard rigging work resulting in improved access and reduced risk of damage to the model during the rigging process.  I find that pre-rigging makes the rigging process far more manageable, although I admit that at one point it seemed as though I would never ever finish all the pre-rigging check list items preceding mast erection.
 
Pete Jaquith
Shipbuilder

Last night I found a 1794 copy of Steel on the Historic Naval Ships Association websitehttp://hnsa.org/doc/steel/index.htm%C2'> . It said:
 
PROPORTIONAL LENGTHS OF YARDS, IN THE ROYAL NAVY.
Main-yard, 8/9 of the main-mast.
Fore-yard, 7/8 of the main-yard.
Mizen-yard, 6/7 of the main-yard.
Main-topsail-yard, 5/7 of the main-yard.
Fore-topsail-yard, 7/8 of the main-topsail-yard.
Mizen-topsail-yard, 2/3 the main-topsail-yard.
Topgallant-yards to 74 gun ships, 2/3 all under, 3/5, of their topsail-yards. Royal-yards, 1/2 of the topsail-yards.
Cross-jack-yard, the same as the fore-topsail-yard.
Spritsail-yard, the same as the fore-topsail-yard.
Spritsail-topsail-yard, the same as the fore-top-gallant-yard.
Studdingsail-yards, 4/7 of their booms.
Driver-yard, the same as the fore-topgallant-yard
 
 
This is different than my copy! And certainly different than Lee.  It works much better.
 
And lastly in the section on rigs and sail plans in Sloop of War, the author comments that it is almost impossible to determine with any certainty what the rig of a small vessel may have been. He says the brigs, sloops, snows and brigantines were re-rigged and re-rigged. Further he comments that although many 18th century small craft are recorded as brigantines, not a single set of spar lengths for a brigantine have come to light. It is only in the 19th century that there is documentary evidence for this rig.

I agree that in there were differences between the theory of masting and what you would find if you could visit the harbor. But what I am seeing is that while most of the masts and other yards seemed to follow the rules in most cases, the topgallant yard lengths listed for specific ship never and i mean never followed the rule.
 
The sail plan I am attempting to reconstruct would be for the Port Antonio purchased into the Royal navy about 1757. She was two masted. The placement of the masts is not suitable for a ketch, and the arrangement of the lower dead-eyes indicates she was a brig or snow and not a schooner of some kind. Given the date I think a snow more likely. I have incuded a paining by Clevely from 1759 of a what appears to be a similar vessel. Just add a handful of gunports in the waist and some sweep ports as well. She was 67'9" on the deck 22' beam, 9'9" deep and 144 tons. L+B+D =99'6" divided by 2 gives a main mast length of 50' which matches nicely with Steel and the other examples given the "Sloop of War". Lee's book does not have much to say about two masted ships.
 
The main yard is .9 times the mainmast 45' and we are still good. The topsail yard is about .72 of the main yard or about 32'5". This figure is supported by all of the tables, If the top-gallant should be 1/2 the topsail then we would use 16' or a couple of inches more. But look at the figures in Steels examples. His brig has a main yard of 42', close, a topsail yard of 31'6", still very close... and a top-gallant of 23'6"  which is a full 34% bigger than his own guidelines would indicate.

With the real Morgan seaworthy and underway again I expect to see a lot more people building her. But I can't imagine many people doing a better job than you have done! You have et the bar very high.

Imagine the challenges of setting and striking this flag while underway. Its easy enough to picture the Museum staff in the photo having a tough time getting a modern piece of fabric the size of this flag stowed. Now imagine its dusk on the Atlantic and you are instructed to strike this flag and stow it. IF you get it down on deck without fouling, you still have to fold it into a neat package. Look how much floor space it takes up in the photo and then picture the limited amount of space on the poopdeck of the ship.

Hello everyone. I am posting 2 pics of my Corel. I want to get it right and then I will add more pics. This is my second build. I completed a Mantua Santa Maria many year ago. 
 
This Wasa has been a lot of fun. I have torn sections out and rebuilt them as I have been able to view so many photos of the real ship. The stern, for example is wrong in the Corel kit. OK let's see if my first pics posts.

One might say that it doesn't REALLY matter unless you are doing a diorama where all the facets of the model are set in a single moment in time.  Otherwise, you may have various pieces of the model displayed in a manner inconsistent with how another part of it would be at the same time; elmtree pumps with the handles installed but nobody manning them, ditto windlasses, guns rigged for sea on one side and run out on the other.  This is done to show off some of the features that might not normally be seen, since the model is a display, not a real. 
 
    Line coiled on deck as if awaiting the admiral's inspection is not far fetch since the model is 'ready for inspection' by the public.  I think any way is correct if that way would have been done at some point on the real ship.

I love this photo for a lot of reasons. here it serves well to illustrate the flags position in relation to the square sails and the point of sail the ship is on. In this case the ship is being sailed as close to the wind as possible,  she is trying to point in the same direction the wind is blowing from. She can't sail directly into the eye of  the wind. But if she braces her yards around as far as they can go, so far that the sails are contacting the stays as is visible in the photo, she can get within six points of the eye of the wind. She is said to be "Close Hauled" and in this case she is close hauled on the starboard tack, since the wind is coming over the Starboard side. The flags as you can see are streaming aft and to port. 
The flags are ACTUALLY indicating a very very slightly different direction of the true wind since the speed of the ship through the water makes them behave a tiny bit differently than a stationary flag on a fixed point in the wind would behave. So if she was sailing past a rock with a flag on it, the flags on the ship and the flag on the rock would be at very slightly different angles. The one on the rock indicating the True Wind and the ones on the ship indicating the Apparent Wind.

Here is my take on drybrushing: You have to think of two spectrums of the condition of the paint you are using. One spectrum is the degree to which the paint is either wet, right out of the container, or dry, where it is set up and hardened. The other spectrum is how much paint is on your brush, with one end of the  spectrum being a fully charged brush ready to drip paint, the other being a brush that has given up all it has to give in terms of leaving a paint mark on a surface.
In order to drybrush a surface you should have a solid base coat of one color already on the model and the color you are drybrushing over this should be different in terms of tone or vibrance, usually this color is a lighter color.
Your brush should be a crappy brush, one that has seen the last of its days as a pointy neatly bristled brush. What you want is an ugly mop of a brush a signpainter would forsake, one  with bristles like a bad hair day.
You want to get to the far end of each of the spectrums I mentioned above. You want some paint in the bristles of this brush but you don't want that paint very wet nor do you want very much paint charging up the bristles. 
You get to this happy place by dipping your brush then wiping the brush on some scrap material, you wipe this mopy brush around on a scrap of cardboard or something until you got 80 to 90% of that paint out of the bristles.
When the brush is hardly leaving any paint marks your just about ready to drybrush on the model.
The feeling you want is that feeling you get when you have a used up felt tip magic marker that is out of ink, you can't write your name  with it but you could still ruin a white linen tablecloth if you pressed hard enough.
THIS is the brush you now drag across your model. Depending on where the brush exists straddling both of the two spectrums ( and it will be shifting on these spectrums as you use it) you will see for yourself how hard you need to press and in which direction you need to brush. Lightly at first and brushing in one direction, pressing hard and scribbling in all directions at the end when the paint is all but gone. Its this last stage where you get the best drybrushing effects as the paint is only adhering on the higher points of the surface you are scumbling over.

I love this photo for a lot of reasons. here it serves well to illustrate the flags position in relation to the square sails and the point of sail the ship is on. In this case the ship is being sailed as close to the wind as possible,  she is trying to point in the same direction the wind is blowing from. She can't sail directly into the eye of  the wind. But if she braces her yards around as far as they can go, so far that the sails are contacting the stays as is visible in the photo, she can get within six points of the eye of the wind. She is said to be "Close Hauled" and in this case she is close hauled on the starboard tack, since the wind is coming over the Starboard side. The flags as you can see are streaming aft and to port. 
The flags are ACTUALLY indicating a very very slightly different direction of the true wind since the speed of the ship through the water makes them behave a tiny bit differently than a stationary flag on a fixed point in the wind would behave. So if she was sailing past a rock with a flag on it, the flags on the ship and the flag on the rock would be at very slightly different angles. The one on the rock indicating the True Wind and the ones on the ship indicating the Apparent Wind.

Here is my take on drybrushing: You have to think of two spectrums of the condition of the paint you are using. One spectrum is the degree to which the paint is either wet, right out of the container, or dry, where it is set up and hardened. The other spectrum is how much paint is on your brush, with one end of the  spectrum being a fully charged brush ready to drip paint, the other being a brush that has given up all it has to give in terms of leaving a paint mark on a surface.
In order to drybrush a surface you should have a solid base coat of one color already on the model and the color you are drybrushing over this should be different in terms of tone or vibrance, usually this color is a lighter color.
Your brush should be a crappy brush, one that has seen the last of its days as a pointy neatly bristled brush. What you want is an ugly mop of a brush a signpainter would forsake, one  with bristles like a bad hair day.
You want to get to the far end of each of the spectrums I mentioned above. You want some paint in the bristles of this brush but you don't want that paint very wet nor do you want very much paint charging up the bristles. 
You get to this happy place by dipping your brush then wiping the brush on some scrap material, you wipe this mopy brush around on a scrap of cardboard or something until you got 80 to 90% of that paint out of the bristles.
When the brush is hardly leaving any paint marks your just about ready to drybrush on the model.
The feeling you want is that feeling you get when you have a used up felt tip magic marker that is out of ink, you can't write your name  with it but you could still ruin a white linen tablecloth if you pressed hard enough.
THIS is the brush you now drag across your model. Depending on where the brush exists straddling both of the two spectrums ( and it will be shifting on these spectrums as you use it) you will see for yourself how hard you need to press and in which direction you need to brush. Lightly at first and brushing in one direction, pressing hard and scribbling in all directions at the end when the paint is all but gone. Its this last stage where you get the best drybrushing effects as the paint is only adhering on the higher points of the surface you are scumbling over.

Here is my take on drybrushing: You have to think of two spectrums of the condition of the paint you are using. One spectrum is the degree to which the paint is either wet, right out of the container, or dry, where it is set up and hardened. The other spectrum is how much paint is on your brush, with one end of the  spectrum being a fully charged brush ready to drip paint, the other being a brush that has given up all it has to give in terms of leaving a paint mark on a surface.
In order to drybrush a surface you should have a solid base coat of one color already on the model and the color you are drybrushing over this should be different in terms of tone or vibrance, usually this color is a lighter color.
Your brush should be a crappy brush, one that has seen the last of its days as a pointy neatly bristled brush. What you want is an ugly mop of a brush a signpainter would forsake, one  with bristles like a bad hair day.
You want to get to the far end of each of the spectrums I mentioned above. You want some paint in the bristles of this brush but you don't want that paint very wet nor do you want very much paint charging up the bristles. 
You get to this happy place by dipping your brush then wiping the brush on some scrap material, you wipe this mopy brush around on a scrap of cardboard or something until you got 80 to 90% of that paint out of the bristles.
When the brush is hardly leaving any paint marks your just about ready to drybrush on the model.
The feeling you want is that feeling you get when you have a used up felt tip magic marker that is out of ink, you can't write your name  with it but you could still ruin a white linen tablecloth if you pressed hard enough.
THIS is the brush you now drag across your model. Depending on where the brush exists straddling both of the two spectrums ( and it will be shifting on these spectrums as you use it) you will see for yourself how hard you need to press and in which direction you need to brush. Lightly at first and brushing in one direction, pressing hard and scribbling in all directions at the end when the paint is all but gone. Its this last stage where you get the best drybrushing effects as the paint is only adhering on the higher points of the surface you are scumbling over.

Here is my take on drybrushing: You have to think of two spectrums of the condition of the paint you are using. One spectrum is the degree to which the paint is either wet, right out of the container, or dry, where it is set up and hardened. The other spectrum is how much paint is on your brush, with one end of the  spectrum being a fully charged brush ready to drip paint, the other being a brush that has given up all it has to give in terms of leaving a paint mark on a surface.
In order to drybrush a surface you should have a solid base coat of one color already on the model and the color you are drybrushing over this should be different in terms of tone or vibrance, usually this color is a lighter color.
Your brush should be a crappy brush, one that has seen the last of its days as a pointy neatly bristled brush. What you want is an ugly mop of a brush a signpainter would forsake, one  with bristles like a bad hair day.
You want to get to the far end of each of the spectrums I mentioned above. You want some paint in the bristles of this brush but you don't want that paint very wet nor do you want very much paint charging up the bristles. 
You get to this happy place by dipping your brush then wiping the brush on some scrap material, you wipe this mopy brush around on a scrap of cardboard or something until you got 80 to 90% of that paint out of the bristles.
When the brush is hardly leaving any paint marks your just about ready to drybrush on the model.
The feeling you want is that feeling you get when you have a used up felt tip magic marker that is out of ink, you can't write your name  with it but you could still ruin a white linen tablecloth if you pressed hard enough.
THIS is the brush you now drag across your model. Depending on where the brush exists straddling both of the two spectrums ( and it will be shifting on these spectrums as you use it) you will see for yourself how hard you need to press and in which direction you need to brush. Lightly at first and brushing in one direction, pressing hard and scribbling in all directions at the end when the paint is all but gone. Its this last stage where you get the best drybrushing effects as the paint is only adhering on the higher points of the surface you are scumbling over.

I love this photo for a lot of reasons. here it serves well to illustrate the flags position in relation to the square sails and the point of sail the ship is on. In this case the ship is being sailed as close to the wind as possible,  she is trying to point in the same direction the wind is blowing from. She can't sail directly into the eye of  the wind. But if she braces her yards around as far as they can go, so far that the sails are contacting the stays as is visible in the photo, she can get within six points of the eye of the wind. She is said to be "Close Hauled" and in this case she is close hauled on the starboard tack, since the wind is coming over the Starboard side. The flags as you can see are streaming aft and to port. 
The flags are ACTUALLY indicating a very very slightly different direction of the true wind since the speed of the ship through the water makes them behave a tiny bit differently than a stationary flag on a fixed point in the wind would behave. So if she was sailing past a rock with a flag on it, the flags on the ship and the flag on the rock would be at very slightly different angles. The one on the rock indicating the True Wind and the ones on the ship indicating the Apparent Wind.

Here is my take on drybrushing: You have to think of two spectrums of the condition of the paint you are using. One spectrum is the degree to which the paint is either wet, right out of the container, or dry, where it is set up and hardened. The other spectrum is how much paint is on your brush, with one end of the  spectrum being a fully charged brush ready to drip paint, the other being a brush that has given up all it has to give in terms of leaving a paint mark on a surface.
In order to drybrush a surface you should have a solid base coat of one color already on the model and the color you are drybrushing over this should be different in terms of tone or vibrance, usually this color is a lighter color.
Your brush should be a crappy brush, one that has seen the last of its days as a pointy neatly bristled brush. What you want is an ugly mop of a brush a signpainter would forsake, one  with bristles like a bad hair day.
You want to get to the far end of each of the spectrums I mentioned above. You want some paint in the bristles of this brush but you don't want that paint very wet nor do you want very much paint charging up the bristles. 
You get to this happy place by dipping your brush then wiping the brush on some scrap material, you wipe this mopy brush around on a scrap of cardboard or something until you got 80 to 90% of that paint out of the bristles.
When the brush is hardly leaving any paint marks your just about ready to drybrush on the model.
The feeling you want is that feeling you get when you have a used up felt tip magic marker that is out of ink, you can't write your name  with it but you could still ruin a white linen tablecloth if you pressed hard enough.
THIS is the brush you now drag across your model. Depending on where the brush exists straddling both of the two spectrums ( and it will be shifting on these spectrums as you use it) you will see for yourself how hard you need to press and in which direction you need to brush. Lightly at first and brushing in one direction, pressing hard and scribbling in all directions at the end when the paint is all but gone. Its this last stage where you get the best drybrushing effects as the paint is only adhering on the higher points of the surface you are scumbling over.

HMS Victory
1:96 Scratchbuild Project
Part 19 – Wrapping Up
 
 
At this point just about everything I had on my list has been covered. In this last part I will cover a couple incidentals involved in wrapping the project up.
 
Excess Rope
 
 
If one looks at the lengths of rope specified in Steele’s, or even just thinks about how much rope would be left over when a line was completely hauled in, it becomes evident that there must have been an amazing amount of rope lying about the deck, especially when no sails were set and buntlines, leechlines, slab lines, bowlines, clue lines, and others were with drawn back to some stowage point ready to be let out when sails were set. I decided very early on, that I could in no way model all this clutter without obscuring a lot of the model, but I did want to model some. The following pictures illustrate how some of this was done.
 

 
Among the first excess lines to be dealt with were the fore yard jeer falls. With the yard hauled up to its normal position, from which, I believe, it was hardly ever moved, a long length of large rope remains. Seldom used, it is unlikely it would be kept too readily available. I decided to coil it up and stash it behind the mast out of the way. The main yard jeer falls are belayed on the upper gun deck out of site, so were not an issue.
 
 

 
Many lines belay on the forecastle rail where they are tied off to the timberheads there. Only some of these excess rope coils were modeled.
 
Coils were made by wrapping line around a tapered dowel, tying it off, removing it from the dowel and soaking it with flat acrylic emulsion. This left a flat finish and stiffened the rope so it stayed in place when draped over a timberhead. Coils secured around their middles were wrapped around bent wires inserted into the point grooves in a pair of screw adjustable dividers. Then when the right length was wrapped up, several turns were taken around the middle, finished off with a clove hitch and this, too, got soaked with emulsion. The dividers were then closed enough to remove the coil. These then got draped on timberheads, kevels or even tied up on a shroud if the rope was belayed there. If these coils are draped while the emulsion is still wet, they can be shaped realistically. This shape will be retained when they dry.
 
Here are some more of these on the timberheads at the fore end of the waist.
 

 
The next two pictures show lines that have been “flemished,” that is, wound into a neat circular pattern on the flat of the deck. I reserved this treatment for large lines that I expect were frequently used and therefore needed to be readily available. In the first picture below those astride the mizzenmast are the falls of the davit lifts, and those further aft are the mizzen topsail sheets.
 

 
The flemished lines in the next picture are the fore top sail sheets.
 
 

 
These arrangements were made as follows: First a small piece of paper was laid on a piece of soft Homosote board. Homosote is a compressed pulp sheet product that takes and holds pins well. A pin was then pushed through the rope near its end and pushed through the paper into the board. Titebond glue was thinly spread on the paper around the pin and a couple turns of rope taken around and pressed down on the tacky glue. At this stage the paper itself could be rotated on the pin with more rope being fed and pressed down until the desired diameter was reached. The rope was then brushed lightly with some water to bring the glue up into the rope, the pin carefully removed, a piece of waxed paper put on top, and the whole affair weighted until dry. When dry, the paper was trimmed back under the outer coil of rope with scissors. The paper was then glued down to the deck and the end of the rope tucked up to appear to emerge from its belaying point.
 
Flags
 
 
The very last item to be dealt with, aside from the case, was the question of flags. The decision on which flags to fly could result in a number anywhere from zero to probably 25 or 30, if signal flags were flown. I had diagrams for all the historic, “England expects … “ signal flags, and I had gathered data on which pennants, ensigns and other flags were likely flown at Trafalgar. In the end I settled on only the large white ensign. I find at times even this can be a distraction from what is meant to be shown on the model, but it can be easily removed, so there it is. Its quite large, 20 by 40 feet, as can be seen below.
 

 
The ensign was made from some very old fine weave drafting linen, from which the resinous wax was removed by boiling. A larger piece than required was then pressed with a steam iron and taped down flat on a board. The ensign pattern was laid out with a sharp pencil and the white, blue and red colors painted on both sides with acrylic designers guache. This was thinned only very slightly to avoid running and painted on in two coats on each side. The ensign was then trimmed to size, pressed again and draped to appear standing in still air.
 
So, this story began with a picture of Victory approaching and it ends with a view from astern.
 

 
I have enjoyed describing my experiences with the construction of this model, which spanned a period of over thirty years. Many were surprised to see it finished – and I was one of them. Looking back while writing all this has made me appreciate the time spent even more. I hope this series has been helpful in some way to those who have followed it and especially those who have stayed with it to this point.
 
As I said at the start, I did not plan to cover every step in the construction of this model. However, if there is some point of interest that was not covered please let me know and I will try to cover it.
 
Thank you for spending time with this and especially for all your comments, suggestions and generous compliments.
 
I expect soon to be posting a new series on my current modeling project, a fully framed 1:60 model of HMS Naiad, 38, 1797.
 
 
Ed Tosti

Young America - extreme clipper 1853
Part 63 – Lower deck framing continued
 
A lot of repetitive work remains to complete the framing of the lower deck.  In the first picture the beam just aft of the fore mast step has been glued down and the hanging knee on the port side is being fit to shape against the ceiling planks between two of the future view port “windows”.
 

 
Fitting these hanging knees is a time consuming task.  Once they are installed under a beam, the work races forward through the easier steps of fitting lodging knees, pillars, carlings and ledges.  Carling scores in the next beam are then cut, the beam is glued down and progress grinds to a crawl as the next set of hanging knees get fitted.
 
In the next picture the headers spanning the space around the mast are being fit where a full beam is omitted. 
 

 
These are the same depth as the beams.  They fit into the scores with half-lap joints.  These headers are not true mast partners since the masts were secured only at the step and at partners on the main deck.  Half-beams are fitted between these headers and the side.  A hanging knee is being attached to one of these in the next picture.
 

 
Although the knee was shaped before the beam aft of the mast was installed, it was easier to install it on the half-beam and then install the assembly  - not much room to attach the knee with both adjacent beams installed.
 
In the next picture the end of half-beam on the other side is being fit to the frames.
 

 
It will be cut to length after the other header is set.  The next picture shows both half-beams installed.
 

 
The next beam has been glued in and lodging knee installation is catching up.
 
The next picture shows the pillar with its top knees attached being installed under that beam after the hanging knees were attached.
 

 
In the last picture, two more beams have been set.  The setting carlings and ledges is keeping pace.
 

 
This deck framing is going faster than the Naiad deck framing – as I am sure it did in the actual construction of the two ships.  Young America had fewer but larger framing members, the spacing was very regular, and the beams were one piece.  There are more knees – 8 per beam/pillar, but except for the hanging knees they are easier to fit.  Naiad's hanging knees attached to the sides of the beams were much easier to fit.
 
Now for another pair of those pesky under-beam hanging knees.
 
Ed

I love this photo for a lot of reasons. here it serves well to illustrate the flags position in relation to the square sails and the point of sail the ship is on. In this case the ship is being sailed as close to the wind as possible,  she is trying to point in the same direction the wind is blowing from. She can't sail directly into the eye of  the wind. But if she braces her yards around as far as they can go, so far that the sails are contacting the stays as is visible in the photo, she can get within six points of the eye of the wind. She is said to be "Close Hauled" and in this case she is close hauled on the starboard tack, since the wind is coming over the Starboard side. The flags as you can see are streaming aft and to port. 
The flags are ACTUALLY indicating a very very slightly different direction of the true wind since the speed of the ship through the water makes them behave a tiny bit differently than a stationary flag on a fixed point in the wind would behave. So if she was sailing past a rock with a flag on it, the flags on the ship and the flag on the rock would be at very slightly different angles. The one on the rock indicating the True Wind and the ones on the ship indicating the Apparent Wind.

I love this photo for a lot of reasons. here it serves well to illustrate the flags position in relation to the square sails and the point of sail the ship is on. In this case the ship is being sailed as close to the wind as possible,  she is trying to point in the same direction the wind is blowing from. She can't sail directly into the eye of  the wind. But if she braces her yards around as far as they can go, so far that the sails are contacting the stays as is visible in the photo, she can get within six points of the eye of the wind. She is said to be "Close Hauled" and in this case she is close hauled on the starboard tack, since the wind is coming over the Starboard side. The flags as you can see are streaming aft and to port. 
The flags are ACTUALLY indicating a very very slightly different direction of the true wind since the speed of the ship through the water makes them behave a tiny bit differently than a stationary flag on a fixed point in the wind would behave. So if she was sailing past a rock with a flag on it, the flags on the ship and the flag on the rock would be at very slightly different angles. The one on the rock indicating the True Wind and the ones on the ship indicating the Apparent Wind.

Imagine the challenges of setting and striking this flag while underway. Its easy enough to picture the Museum staff in the photo having a tough time getting a modern piece of fabric the size of this flag stowed. Now imagine its dusk on the Atlantic and you are instructed to strike this flag and stow it. IF you get it down on deck without fouling, you still have to fold it into a neat package. Look how much floor space it takes up in the photo and then picture the limited amount of space on the poopdeck of the ship.

Thanks Elmer Cornish and everyone else!
 
Here are some of the latest photos. The first few show the hull with the deck template and the side of the hull being prepared for opening up, so that the internal accommodation can be eventually viewed. The rest of the photos show the hull after the frames have been cutaway. Luckily the hull is structurally strong enough to withstand the hull's side being cut open in such a way. Not for the faint hearted, because, once it's cut, there's no turning back!
 
Anyhow, enjoy the photos.
 
Cheers