JerseyCity Frankie

Another point I will mention here is scale. Not a surprise to see the word "scale" in a ship model forum right? Believe it or not there is also the concept of "scale color" that gets little attention in my opinion. It's the concept that color loses intensity with distance. The farther away you're eye is from a colored object, the more dull it will appear. This is due to the refraction of the light rays themselves as they pass through the atmosphere. The effect is stronger the greater the distance the light travels through the atmosphere as more and more of the light rays are scattered. If you're building a 1/48 scale model and you are looking at your model three feet away you are 144 SCALE feet away from your model. In order to view your models paint job "in scale" you would have to view it through "scale air", air that was made artificialy denser, full of fog or mist? OR you can duplicate the effect of "atmospheric perspective" (as the concept is known in the Art world) by toning down the colors you apply to the model. In other words you can adulterated your bright red color by adding tiny amounts of complimentary color and/or white paint, just enough to peel back some of the intensity of the Straight-From-the-Bottle Red paint. It's still red, it's just no longer AS red. We are talking about tiny tiny admixtures of color, just enough to get that red slightly less intense. You'r not going for pink. In the case of most colors the diluting color could be a bit of brown.
This also goes for the color black on models. I never use black right out of the container unless I'm painting inside a hatch cover trying to fool the eye that there are deep unseen spaces below. Otherwise I use very very dark grey.

I have a history of doing maintenance work on historic sailing ships and I have painted on a fair amount of pine tar in my day. Landlubbers often think the tar we talk about when we talk about Tar is asphalt tar, a not too good smelling petroleum industry byproduct used in road maintenance on land. Easy to mistake it with Pine Tar if you don’t use your nose since the two products are shiny black and gloopy. But those of us who use Pine Tar on ships all agree it’s the most lovely smelling substance, perhaps in all the world. Some even say its an aphrodisiac.
But I digress.
Traditional pine tar is made by heating the roots of pine trees in the absence of oxygen, which produces charcoal and pine tar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_tar  and this nice essay on tar is worth a look too: http://www.maritime.org/conf/conf-kaye-tar.htm
 
Nobody on modern tall ships paints tar on their ratlines, but neither do modern sailing vessels use natural fiber line as ratline stuff. Unlike natural fiber line, modern Dacron line is impervious to rot and requires no coatings. But natural fiber line can last longer in a marine environment if its painted or impregnated with tar.
Tar can and often should be cut with turpentine or linseed oil or both, this allows it to flow better and penetrate the fibers of a rope. Full strength unadulterated tar has the consistency of molasses and appears black and is very gloppy. Its not really pigmented and if painted onto a white nonporous surface it will appear to be a streaky dark brown film, it will not behave like black paint which has pigment particles suspended in it and will thus “cover” the same white surface the tar would only smear.
Also the paint will dry in a day while the tar remains very sticky for quite a long while, it remains sticky for weeks. Repeated applications of tar will eventually produce a thick black opaque coating and this is why shrouds and standing rigging is black, they have many coats of tar applied to them eventually leading to a hard shell of tar which keeps the water out and the Ultraviolet Radiation can’t penetrate. Despite modern man-made-fiber lines imperviousness to rot, it still can be harmed by U.V. radiation and this is why it is sometimes tarred but I have read that black paint is often used on modern ships in place of tar since it performs the same U.V. blocking function, LOOKS like tar and is also universally available while Pine Tar can be hard to come by in our modern age. But back in the old days Pine Tar was ubiquitous. Today small quantities are available at tack shops for the horse riding trade.
If you paint Pine Tar on canvas (which I tried once) it turns the fabric an olive drab color and makes it heavy and waterproof and this is where we get Tarpaulin. Paint it on manila line and it darkens it slightly but not so much that you would tell the difference right away between a painted and unpainted piece of line. Put four coats on manila and you will certainly see the color shift to a darker hue but nowhere near black, the line now fairly waterproof and very sticky.
Getting finally to the point, the long way, I am sure pine tar was painted on ratlines. Also I am sure pine tar was already in the rope when it arrived at the ship, having been applied at the ropewalk in a thinned solution or rubbed on with a rag to produce a coating that would penetrate the fibers and add to the lines longevity. But I don’t think it would have been applied in thick enough or repeated coatings sufficient to make the ratlines black. I imagine the bo’sun would have thin tar applied to the ratlines whenever they started to appear dry or took on a chalky chaffed appearance but I do not know that for a fact, I just surmise it from my own experience.

Many cargo carrying sailing ships did indeed have a dedicated spar for slinging cargo into and out of the hold. Located on the forward side of the main mast and folded vertically stowed parallel to the mast when not in use, hinged on a collar-sometimes sharing the spider band-around the mast at its base- and long enough so that when lowered into position its peak was directly over the main hatch. Vangs on either side controlled its port and starboard motion and conventional tackle lifted and lowered the loads of cargo. This was a slow and messy job, often taking weeks and done by the ships crew, not special cargo handlers. More often than not this took place at anchor, not at a dock, and cargo was discharged into lighters alongside.

Paper intended for max longevity is made of rag from fabric rather than wood pulp. It'll be labeled "100%rag". Wood pulp is full of acids that oxidize the paper and make it brittle and yellow. Some suggest that sealing paper on all sides with a varnish or coating of some kind will block oxygen from aiding the decomposition of the paper but I imagine it wouldn't guarantee immortality.

I would love to see the sails made of khaki pants! One of the dead horses I keep flogging is the color of sails. Worn khaki is likely a very good choice due to the color: not white, not grey, some kind of cream/grey hybrid.

The basic principle is that Right Hand Laid strands (threads, in model rope making) will lay up into Left Hand Laid rope- also called Shroud Laid or "S" laid. Full size running rigging line is always Cable Laid -also called Right Hand laid or "S" laid. If you don't want to use Shroud Laid Rope (Left Laid or "Z"laid)  on your running rigging (which would be inaccurate difficult to notice) you have to start with strands that are Left Hand Laid. But you can never find Left Hand Laid thread.
What you can do though is make your own Left Laid thread. Its laborious but it is possible to UNLAY thread, spin it in the opposite direction of its lay. Maybe you can do that to three strands at once on your rope walk? If you cant, use a reversible electric drill, chuck a hook into it, tie one end of one strand of thread to a chair and put the other end on the hook on the drill. Stand in a place that keeps the thread tight but not too tight. Turn on the drill, reversing the lay. The thread gets longer as the twists come out. You will reach a point when the thread is entirely untwisted. Keep going and lay the thread up in the opposite direction. There is no good way to know when you are done twisting, this will take trial and error. Now you have gheto Shroud Laid thread and this can now go on your rope walk to lay up into Cable Laid Rope. There is a facbook group called "Ropemakers" which is worth a look see.

You can never have enough thread string twine or line and there never seems to be the EXACT thing you want for the line you are making. I have had a lot of success stopping at every garage sale, lawn sale, stoop sale and gate sale I pass. Apparently everyone has a collection of sewing stuff sitting around and a certain percentage of these people are trying to get rid of it and I am usually happy to oblige them. I have found some amazing stuff that is not available at fabric stores. Also while I think of it, a well stocked shoe repair place usually will have some very heavy thread for the shoe repair business.

Happy 4th of July! And you will remember that the film takes place over the 4th of July weekend: The town of Amity is going to have its summer tourist season RUINED because of that big shark out there, forcing the sheriff to close the beaches! Better get into the Orca and hunt that shark! I try to re-watch Jaws every July 4th now and this year I will be thinking of your model when I see all the scenes featuring the Orca.

Paper intended for max longevity is made of rag from fabric rather than wood pulp. It'll be labeled "100%rag". Wood pulp is full of acids that oxidize the paper and make it brittle and yellow. Some suggest that sealing paper on all sides with a varnish or coating of some kind will block oxygen from aiding the decomposition of the paper but I imagine it wouldn't guarantee immortality.

Paper intended for max longevity is made of rag from fabric rather than wood pulp. It'll be labeled "100%rag". Wood pulp is full of acids that oxidize the paper and make it brittle and yellow. Some suggest that sealing paper on all sides with a varnish or coating of some kind will block oxygen from aiding the decomposition of the paper but I imagine it wouldn't guarantee immortality.

Who was member #1 I wonder, and what year was that membership launched? 

John LeCarre has great appeal if you like O'Brian. He hasn't a nautical bone in his body but in my opinion his stories unfold and his characters participate in the narrative  in a way that an O'Brian fan may appreciate. He's the only author I've read that comes close to the sort of idiosyncratic patchy narrative line and charchter  development that O'Brian uses. Plots that skip around, ensambles of charchters who appear again over the span of multiple novels, personal romantic lives impacting charchters as they are engaged in a world seldom explored in literature. And very very British.

Hello,
 
In front of the multitude of small problems which prevent me from working serenely, I transferred all my publications to ANCRE which will henceforth assure the diffusion.
These are the following monographs: Le Commerce de Marseille, La Fleur de Lis, L'Amarante, La Machine à curer les ports, Le Rochefort and finally L'Égyptienne.
ANCRE will therefore take care of the distribution of the books and, good news, will take care of translations for those that dont exist.
Time to put everything in place and the monographs will soon appear on the ANCRE website.
Stopping publication does not mean stopping monographs. I hope that new subjects will see the light of day.
 
Best regards,
Gérard Delacroix

I'm sure that there were local variations, but they were generally longer and much thinner than seen on most models. The handles would be less than 2" in diameter (try grabbing a chunky one in your hand!) and the overall length about 18" long. See:
 
https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/3892.html

Good job I put them on opposite sides then Frankie. 😉
 
B.E.

True, it might be locally very popular, and that should be factored into the asking price. By "not a particularly popular subject" I was thinking more about shallow-draft Dutch yachts compared to, say, three-masted men-of-war with lots of guns. 😉

Use progressively smaller brushes to remove the loose dust cobwebs etc. then vacuum with an empty biro tube pushed  through a piece of card and placed over the vacuum hose. The narrow suction can be more focused into crevices without tearing off fixtures and fittings.
 
Finally, I spray the rigging with matt varnish which turns the remaining dust particles on the rigging transparent and completely transforms the whole thing.

At the time of the Royal Caroline the Red Ensign represented the senior squadron of the Royal Navy, so I would suggest that it is perfectly reasonable for this vessel to wear it.
 I doubt Cleveley was wrong.
In order of seniority the Red Squadron was followed by the White Squadron and then the Blue.
An Admiral of the Red was senior to an Admiral of the White, who in turn was senior to an Admiral of the Blue.
 
ps Good choice of Ensign  Spyglass 😉
 
B.E.
 

B.E. - Thanks for the splint suggestion, with it I was able to make a fix (it isn't quite perfect, but such is life).
 
I made my splint:

Then I glued it to the bulkhead and shaped it. Unfortunately I couldn't get it perfectly back together, probably a downside of MDF, but I think it will be fine.

I then sanded the inside edge of each bulkhead to make the fit of the deck a little easier and cut out a larger notch in the deck to fit around the repaired section.

Now the deck is attached. I believe the minor off-center issue in the bow notch of the deck is due to my repair. I plan on sanding this even with the braces. 

Thankfully, tonight I feel better about the whole ordeal than yesterday when it happened.

...

then all yards are formed - 16 in total, the last 10 still missing the yard strengthansers rope. but at least I'm back on track after a long break. it's nice to get started again and get the dust off the "old lady".

Hi Tim Thank you for your response, it makes sense that it supports the yarden. I du not think it looks flexible at the bottom. for turning the yard. but then the good thing is that when building a model, things do not hawe to work, just they look right.
Cheers
Jens
 

Hi All. 
 
 

 

 

 

 
14-01-2018
Small opdate  -   thou it tok a houl weeks spartime 
 
Jens

I would not wish to lose rudder control at a crucial moment of going about either! It does seem like an odd arrangement.

I have commented on this subject before, but since someone else resurrected it I will add my two cents worth.  For what it’s worth I am scratch building a model of the longboat shown on page 90 of May’s book so this topic is of considerable interest to me.
 
First of all as an active small boat sailor, pulling the tiller out of it’s socket during tacking in any kind of a breeze will likely cause the boat to broach and capsize. -Personal experience!
 
The Scottish boat shown on the drawing posted in the drawing is not gaff rigged with a long boom like the longboat.  It is rigged with a dipping or standing lug sail.  Dipping lug sails are actually dropped and rehoisted during tacking.  This past May I watched a pair of lug rigged boats doing just that while tacking into the harbor of St Ives, Cornwall.  If a standing lug rig, the sail’s boom is short enough for the sheet to be pushed forward around the tiller during tacking.  This drawing, therefore does not apply.
 
These longboats were once rigged with a gaff sail without boom.  The foot of these  sails was much shorter than the boomed sails shown on the Medway longboat model.  May includes a picture of a longboat rigged with this boom less gaff sail in his book.  It would have been awkward but perhaps possible to pull the clew of a boomless sail forward enough during tacking to keep the sheet from fouling the tiller.  This would have been impossible with a sail attached to a long boom overhanging the transom.
 
Cutter rigged boats in Britain sailed into the 1900’s with unstayed bowsprits.  Tom Cunliffe’s Pilot Cutters Under Sail includes photos of unstayed bowsprits bending in a stiff breeze.
 
For other mysteries relating to the way that gaff rigged cutters actually worked. see Tom Cunliffe’s Hand Reef and Steer recently reviewed in the book section of the forum below.
 
Roger