shipmodel

Hi all - thanks for looking in. Another week, another report. The hulls are not going as well as could be hoped, so here is another deour. To go with the tops that were built last time, I am now making the masts. I took a plank of rock maple and cut it down to the dimensions of the masts and spars that I measured from the Budriot plans. They are cut as square sticks sized to the largest width of the ultimate mast or spar, then cut to length. As long as I was cutting, I cut duplicates for the two models. Here are most of them, from the 5/8” x 19” of the main mast, down to the 3/16” x 6” of the main stunsail boom. These were all cut on a Hegner Mk 4 multi-tool. It is a mid-sized tool that fits between the Preac and a full sized table saw, and is perfect for the size of the QAR models. It has a table saw, router, disc sander, and a Jacobs chuck that can power a flexible shaft grinding tool or an add-on lathe unit. I picked it up used and it came without an instruction manual, but I am figuring it out as I go. After all of the pieces were cut, I turned first to the main mast. It is a fairly simple tapered cylinder. I planned to use the lathe on the Hegner, but it will only take 12” work pieces, not the 19” of the mast. Without access to a larger one I went back to basics to carve the mast. The first step was to cut the tenon for the mast cap while the blank was still square. The blade height and rip fence were adjusted on the table saw and the tenon was quickly cut out on all four faces. Then the blank was made octagonal. This was done in the usual way by marking out the 2-3-2 divisions down the length of the blank with a dividers. With a sharp block plane the corners were taken down to the lines, resulting in the eight sided stick on the right. After the corners were marked up as sight guides, they were taken down and rounded with a coarse disc in a hand-held random orbit sander. I didn't find it difficult to do this, since it only had to be accurate enough for a first approximation. I paused frequently to mark up any high spots that I felt when I spun the blank between my fingers. Then they were sanded down and the process was repeated till it felt round. Once the round blank was achieved I went to the plans and determined that the diameter just under the cap was 7/16”. This was marked onto the top of the mast using a circle guide. Using a coarse sanding drum in the Dremel I took the mast down to that size in a sharp taper right at the top. I would pull the drum towards me, grinding off a thin slice from the mast, then rotate the blank a little and repeat. One corner of the top tenon was marked so I would not forget to make a complete circle before checking my progress. From there I moved down the length of the blank: grinding a strip with the dremel and turning the blank a little bit, grinding and turning, grinding and turning. In essence, I became a very slow lathe. After doing this for a while I would smooth out any humps and hollows that developed by sanding the blank on a sheet of sandpaper which has been glued to a piece of plexiglass laid flat of the workbench. This process would have taken much longer if the mast had a straight taper from base to cap. However, the plans had these two little beehive drawings which had to be the tapering diagrams. They were only designated ‘a’ and ‘b’, but after comparing them to the plans I determined that the one on the left fits the three lower masts, while the one on the right fits only the bowsprit. This tapering process continued for what seemed like a very long time until I could slide the mast up through the top with the masthead extending above the top as indicated on the plans. Now the pieces to support the crosstrees and top were made. Unlike English practice, there are no hounds, cheeks or bibs. Instead, the French at the time used only a front fish that fit to the mast and slid up between the crosstrees. A two-part bolster was fitted to each side and treenailed to the mast and to the front fish. Here are the plans. The fish was made out of pear and treenailed to the mast with walnut dowels for contrast. The fish is also held in place by a pair of wooldings that lie in broad grooves carved into the face of the piece. The bolsters are also pear and treenailed with walnut. The only technical point here is that it was made in one piece, not two. The staggered separation line was drawn on in pencil, then the back of a #11 blade was used to scribe the lines, which tattoos the pencil marks into the wood. The mast is reinforced by alternating iron mast bands and wooldings. The bands are made from 1/16” wide brass strips which are wrapped around the mast and sized to fit, then chemically blackened. They are attached temporarily with glue before holes are drilled for metal pins. Each end of the strip where they meet gets one, and a third is placed on the opposite side of the mast. The pins are annealed iron wire which is inserted, glued, and clipped short before being peened smooth. You can see one on the band near the bottom end of the front fish and another just below the light reflection on the other band. Working in a large scale like 1/36 will allow me to build some details much as they are made in full sized practice. The wooldings are a case in point. A cherry strip was cut, soaked and bent around the mast before being glued in place. 3” rope (1” diameter) is wrapped 13 turns around the mast, packed tightly against the wood strip, and cinched tight. A second cherry strip is added to the other side of the wrapping. A painting of dilute PVA glue secures everything. Once the glue is dry, everything was given a coat of the finish and rubbed down. The top was fit back on the masthead to see that everything fit properly. The inset shows how the front fish comes up to the level of the top of the crosstrees and takes the place of the spacer that, in English practice, separates the masthead from the heel of the topmast. There is a third mast band that should be around the masthead just above the top, but the platform would not fit around it so it was removed until the top is permanently attached to the mast. [sharp eyes will also notice that the crowsfoot holes are towards the back of the mast. This will be turned around before the top is attached]. So here are two of the shipyard workers just skylarking on the main top. One seems to see a friend on the ground. It’s a good thing that Dread Pirate Peter hasn’t spotted them. He has some pointed questions to ask about the location of crowsfoot holes. And why the bands and wooldings stop halfway down the mast. Auf wiedersehen . . . Dan

Mij - What machine did you use to resaw the cherry? A band saw or table saw? Can you show us the jig, please. I will be following your build as avidly in cherry as in tulip. Dan

Hi Michael - Ingenious jig to slice the brass tubing. I will have to remember it when I need a similar solution. I also like the photos with the odd ropes and fittings lying around the deck, just like a real ship under construction. Very nicely done. Like Jay, I would love to know how you take photos with such depth of field when you are not even holding the camera. Be well Dan

Hi Daniel - Thanks for the compliments, but you are giving me way too much credit for the research. It is all the product of the team down at the North Carolina Maritime Museum, and made available online by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Affairs. Here is the link to the History page: http://wayback.archive-it.org/org-67/20120514234115/http://www.qaronline.org/History/historyintro.htm My own research is more aimed at resolving modeling issues, such as the differences between French and British rigging practices of the period. Be well Dan

Frankie - Nice look to the water. The waves and whitecaps bring out some of the violence of the scene. I also like the contrast with the color of the Kraken's body - a nice angry octopussy sort of color. Dan

Thanks for all the nice compliments. Michael - I will trade some of my carving skills for your metalworking expertise. I just finished reading your log of the Bristol cutter and was blown away. Ken - yes, the jaw is the major problem, but the width of the eye sockets also seemed too broad. Here is the face after narrowing. The lion is coming along nicely, but has a ways to go. If my artistic skills are up to it, I want to get a ferocious expression, but that may be hoping for too much. After putting the lion to bed for a while, the next independent pieces that I turned to were the mast tops. By 1710 in France they were circular but without the earlier raised rim. They are built with the usual overlapping plank construction, a flat rim and radial cleats. Here are Budriot’s plans, which are almost identical to Lees’ and Marquhardt’s. This is the main top, but the fore is identical, other than being scaled down just a fraction. The mizzen top is smaller, but the construction method for all three is identical. To build them, the first piece to be made was the square filler piece. It is just a piece of 1/8” thick scrap, sized to the lubber’s hole on the plans. The cryptic symbol on this one is left over from its use as a jig for a previous model. I cut this carefully on the Preac, as it will guide the rest of the construction. The planks are 1mm thick birch, cut to width and long enough to span the diameter of the top. On the real ship they would have been cut thick then carved down to make the lap joints, leaving a raised portion in the center. Instead, I took a piece of the planking and cut sections the length of one side of the filler guide. These were then glued to the center of the planks with the edges matched up. When the glue was dry one edge was colored with a black marker. A completed one is just above the filler guide piece. The cleats in the lower left are mass produced since the fore and main tops take 16 each and the mizzen top takes 12. I cut a rectangle of 1mm cherry sheet with the grain going in the short dimension. Then I glued another strip on top of one edge with an overhang equal to the width of the rim with the grain also running in the short direction. Now I could part off 1/16” wide cleats with a narrow blade in the table saw until I ran out of material. The cleats are left raw at this point and will be shaped and tapered later. To start the platform construction, four of the lap planks are positioned around the filler guide. Two of them (top/bottom) have the thick section turned up and the other two (left/right) have the section facing down. They are glued at their overlaps and clamped tightly around the filler guide. When they are solid it is easy to lay in the other down facing planks and glue them to the underneath planks and to each other. After the clamps are removed the platform was flipped over and the remaining planks were glued across the first sets of planks. The center of the filler piece was located and the outer perimeter of the top was drawn with a compass. This was cut close on the band saw and left rough, to be taken down to the line on a disc sander after the rim is installed. With the compass still set for the perimeter size, an arc was drawn on a rectangle of the cherry sheet, this time with the grain running the long way. The compass was closed the width of the rim and a second curve was drawn inside the first but with the same center. Three more pieces of cherry were stacked under the first and glued together at the upper corners and lower center only, not where the rim pieces will come from. The inside curve was cut on the band saw then smoothed to the line with a sanding drum in the drill press. The outer curve was cut large, to be sanded down after installation on the platform. After completing the second cut the pieces separated automatically. The rim pieces were cut to one quarter of the circumference of the platform using the plans to make the initial cuts, the fine tuning being done during assembly. With the platform, rims and cleats made, I assembled them with neutral pH PVA glue. Care has to be taken to see that the cleats are equally spaced and the rim pieces match up to each other, but otherwise construction is pretty straightforward. The shafts of the cleats were made overlong so their tails extended into the lubber’s hole. These tails were clipped off and the shafts tapered from the rim to the hole with a flap-wheel sander. All of the corners and edges were cleaned up and rounded with a sanding stick then the top was given its first coat of finish. Here I used Floquil clear flat, but with a few drops of my stain mixture (50% Natural, 25% Cherry, 25% Early American) added. The finish enhanced the color of the cherry while the light stain brought the tone and hue of the birch into the same color family. It even slightly enhanced the grain of the birch, as if it were older wood. This is exactly the effect that I was looking for. I think that I will be using this color palette a lot as the build continues. The trestletrees and crosstrees were cut to length from 3mm x 6mm pear. I used the Preac to cut the notches in the trestletrees to accept the crosstrees. Tapers were sanded on all eight arms as shown on the plans, then they were installed on the underside of the platforms. Holes for the crowsfoot lines were drilled through the forward rim. I spaced them a bit closer together at the center to account for the anticipated narrowing effect as the top curves away from the euphroe. I’ll see how that works out when it is rigged. The elongated holes for the upper deadeye strops were roughly cut by drilling two holes side by side then using the drill bit to nibble out the wood between them. Finally, I indicated the nails that hold the two layers of planking together where they overlap. As with the boats, these were indicated by drilling shallow holes with a #80 (0.012”) drill. A wash of stain mix was flooded over the holes and immediately wiped off. It darkened the holes without changing the color of the planks. This is a technique that I will use again as well. There will be additional holes to mount a number of blocks under the tops, but I have not studied the rigging plan enough yet to locate them. For now, here are the six tops ready for storage till needed. I'm up in the country this weekend, so hopefully I will soon have some progress to share on the hulls. Dan

Michael - I finally found time to work through all 40 pages of this build log, and it was time very well spent. Like all the others, I am astounded by your skills, and especially your metalworking. A working gimballed compass puts you in a class so far above anything else that you might need an oxygen mask. I am humbled by your willingness to go back and discard something, even a complex metal fitting like the roller crank, if you think it is wrong or you can do better work. The results speak for themselves. And they speak volumes. Thank you for sharing your progress, not only in the building, but in the thought processes and experiments that lead you to your wonderful results. My wife and I are thinking about a trip through Montana, Calgary, Banff and on to Vancouver in the late summer / early fall of next year. I will try to get her to agree to a small detour to see you and the cutter in person. It would be the highlight of my trip, if not hers Till then - rock on as you have begun. . . Dan

Ahhh . . . to have the luxury of being able to savor the journey. . . my customers rarely care about the process. Thankfully, I can come here to enjoy the journeys of my colleagues and friends. Be well Dan

Hi Mij - A very major step, as Druxey says. But before you retire all of your excellent work so far, you might consider staining the tulipwood to get the depth of color that you are looking for. Even basswood, which is at least as dull white as tulip, can be brought to an acceptable look with a judicious mix of colors. I always use 50% uncolored or Natural (that's what Minwax calls it) to even out the stain and prevent blotchiness. After that, just experiment with various stains till you get the one or combination that you like. Whatever your choice, I will watch your progress with interest. Dan

Hello again - Just back from the doctor, who says that a 'trigger finger' problem that I am having with my right thumb is related to the repetitive nature of the carving work. He told me to lay off for a while, and gave me a cortisone shot into the base of the thumb. Ouch ! And then it didn't work! I don't have much more to do on the first figurehead, so I am going to finish it in easy stages, then work on some larger pieces before going back to the second lion. Here is a short report on where I am now - This next phase of the carving is mostly a process of refining the shapes that were defined last time. For this I mostly use a series of diamond abrasive burrs of various shapes. Here is the set, purchased from Micro-Mark some time ago when Chinese tool makers hadn't started taking short cuts with quality. They have held up very well for more than a decade. The long cone in the Dremel is very useful. I use the point for lining out and small details, while the larger diameter of the base of the burr smooths and shapes larger surfaces. The carving process with these burrs is the same as for the larger bitts - I first define the edges and planes, then refine them by rounding the corners and adjusting the angles of the planes. Raised body parts like the tail and upper arm are given some dimensionality by undercutting them slightly to create a shadow line. All of the carving is all done by eye at this stage - the Michelangelo method - I just remove whatever doesn't look like the image in my head. Here are a series of shots with the work rotating starboard to port. The major issue right now is the shape of the head. It is still too broad. In some photos it looks more like a lizard than a lion. You can see that quite clearly in the first enlarged photo below. This was taken with the macro setting on the camera, and some of the problem is exaggerated, but you can see what I mean. In the lower photo I used Photoshop to narrow the image about 15%, and now it looks much more leonine. I will carve it down to get that general shape. If you haven't figured it out, the teeth are created by simply drilling a series of small holes which define the negative space between the teeth. I may use a small triangular file to refine them, or just leave them as is, since they are all but invisible uness a camera is used to magnify them. Happy Thanksgiving to all. Dan

Hi all - Two days of carving and the first figurehead is rounding into shape. Here is how I am going about it. I do almost all of my carving with a rotary tool and a series of ever smaller burrs and bitts. Here they are for the first stage of the carving. It includes a 1/4" diameter sanding sleeve for the Dremel plus a set of Disston burrs. Over the years I have added to the set when I found other shapes that could be useful. Here are the ones I use most often. The sanding sleeve is at the top. From left to right we have a straight bit with a rounded tip; a straight bit with a square tip; a reverse cone; and in the Dremel is a sharp cornered reverse rounded cone. This last one is very useful for 'drawing' thin lines onto the wood that serve as landmarks for deeper carving with the other bitts. The first carving was done with the sanding sleeve to round off the square corners and planes left by the band saw, and to get the basic side to side shape. Now the arms are defined, which will fair into the basic shape of the lower body. The mane is rounded, which will frame the shape of the face. The tail was pencilled in on both sides and defined, which then set the depth of the lower body. The crown was detailed, which adjusts the top of the mane. The mane was given its initial texture, which then required reducing the height of the shoulder, etc. etc. This is how I carve, with each step or detail that is worked on leading to a further defining of the adjacent detail. So here is the current look of the first figurehead. The head is still too broad, but that is OK, as it gives me the depth of material that can be carved away for the final detailing of the face. Next time, the final detailing. Be well Dan

Bill - Happy to be of any help along the way. Best of success with the project. Maybe you can post some of your work as you go along. Dan

HI Bill - I'm not sure that any of the kits that you mention would be a good starting point for a QAR model. All are either too late, have only 2 masts, or are much larger ships. Any conversion would involve huge amounts of bashing. Looking around, I saw the Rattlesnake. Although she was American and about 75 years later than QAR, she mounts the same 10 main guns per side and her dimensions are very similar. She has a similar fine entry at the bow although her midships look narrower than QAR. You will have to build a square tuck stern and quarterdeck, but it should get you going in the right direction. Hope that helps. Dan

Hi Michael - Glad you are enjoying the log. The wire was nothing special, just some 28 gauge (about 0.020") soft iron from the hardware store. 100 feet cost under $4. Since they were all removed and discarded after the first four strakes were installed, I used whatever came to hand easiest. Dan

Hi again - Good to see and talk to some of you at the NRG conference. Had a good time and the speakers on Saturday were great. Not much to report. A good deal of work went into doing the second boat, but it replicates the building of the first one, so it was not the subject of a build log entry. Here are the two, side by side. The second was made of cherry, so it is much darker than the first. Since they will be on separate models that will not be displayed together, they do not have to be identical. I actually prefer the first. The lighter color of the wood lets the caulking and fastening details stand out a bit more. But the darker one is closer to the color of old, unpainted boats that I have seen. I won't get to work on the hulls for another week, so I am starting on the figureheads. The Advice Prize draught does not have a figurehead of any kind. Although the actual ship probably did, the Admiralty was not interested in decorations. They just took off the hull lines so that later English ships could benefit from any foreign design advances. Budriot has a lion for Le Mercure, shown here. This is going to be the basis of my figureheads, but a number of others are being studied. Here are three from models in the NMM collection. All of these are too florid and intricate, I believe, for what would have been a pretty basic ship. I am also studying the lion that was carved for the Gotheborg replica ship. Finally, I am using a cast lion fitting from a ship model company that I used to own. It is the wrong size so I can't simply cast two duplicates, but it should be a good carving aid since I can turn it in my hand to get any view that I want. Construction began with three pieces of hard pear wood glued together. All are 3/8" thick, with the outer ones much longer than the middle one, forming a channel that is the width of the stem. A properly sized copy of the Budriot lion was printed out and glued to one side. The basic outline was then cut on a band saw. The saw marks gave me horizontal landmark for the eyes, nose and mouth and they were pencilled in. The lower body is narrower than the mane, so some of the wood was band sawn off. The crown was similarly defined in a rough way. A false stem of basswood was made which has a tight friction fit between the lion's legs. It will act as a handle and will support the fragile feet and legs as the carving progresses. Next time the carving begins. Be well Dan

Nice save with the new tool. When I saw the first photo I could not imagine how you were going to get the clay removed from the inside walls of the bottle. There are some intricate tools developed by Ralph Preston for bottling models that you can read in Ship Modelers' Shop Notes II from the Nautical Research Guild. The articles may give you some ideas. Ralph is one of the top ship-in-a-bottle modelers in the US. Dan

Mij - That's what we pay for rubber cement that we use for the same purpose. Just another example of how we are two countries divided by a common language. Dan

Hi Mij - Frames looking good. I will be following your progress with interest. Is there a reason for using Copydex? I looked it up and a 125 ml bottle (about 4.25 oz) costs almost $50, which is way more than any other adhesive that I know of. I also looked up the Proxxon long neck tool, since it looked like it would be useful in shaping the solid hulls that I am building. But it was a bit pricey and the reviews were almost uniformly negative. Let us know what your experience is after you have used it for a while. Dan

Hi all – Here is the latest installment of the build log. No pirate talk, just building - - - Some work has been done on the hulls since the last build log, but not enough to show. Instead, the next of the independent subassemblies was completed. These are the anchors. Queen Anne’s Revenge carried four anchors of different sizes, all of which have been discovered. They range from the largest, with a shank length of 13 foot 7 inch and a weight of 3,141 pounds to the smallest at only 8 feet and 642 pounds. The others had shank lengths of 13 foot and 11 foot 4 inches. Here is the archeological drawing of one of them. Image 1 Budriot has drawings of several sizes of anchor for Le Mercure, but the drawings are all identical other than size, and none quite fit the ones discovered. I took his drawing and sized it up or down in Photoshop to make drawings that fit the sizes needed. Image 2 An anchor is a fairly simple construct, with only a few parts: the shank with its arms and the flukes pinned to the arms; the wooden crosspiece called the stock, and a metal ring through the shank above the crosspiece. Here they all are for a pair of 11 foot anchors. Image 3 You can see that they are in various stages of completion. The wood used here is pear, throughout. I did not cast the shank/arms because there were 4 pair of different sizes rather than 8 of the same size. It would have taken longer to make 4 masters and then cast them. The first piece to be shaped is the shank. A piece of pear was cut on the Preac saw to a square cross section of the appropriate size and then cut to length. The drawings show that it had a square head where it went through the crosspiece, then became round below the head, which widened and returned to square with rounded corners where it mated with the arm for the flukes at the throat. A round tenon at the foot was secured through a hole in the arm piece. I first milled the tenons on either end. This is easily done while the wood is still square. Here you can see the setup on the Preac. The miter guage is used to keep the wood square to the blade and the fence is used as a depth stop. Image 4 The height of the blade is set by using an adjustable fitting that sits under the hinged blade holder. It is a screw in a wider sleeve with a red plastic cap on the end of the screw. The hole in the bottom of the sleeve conveniently fits around one of the bolt heads on the blade unit. It is a cumbersome and fiddly arrangement, but I am used to it after 20 years. Image 5 To cut the tenon I set the blade to the desired height, testing by making passes on a piece of scrap basswood. I first cut the shoulders of the tenon, then nibbled away the rest of the wood using a wide blade. The final pass is always sideways across the top of the blade to smooth the side of the tenon. Image 6 The final result is a perfectly centered and square tenon on each end of the shank blank. The tenon that will go through the fluke arm piece is narrower than the head tenon and will later be rounded by trimming the corners then twisting it through progressively smaller holes in a drill plate. Image 6a With the head tenon cut the square hole in the wooden crosspiece has to be cut to match. This is possible because the stock is built up from two pieces. Again using the Preac the blade was adjusted till the cut was exactly half the depth of the tenon. I tested this by cutting grooves in two pieces of scrap that when mated allowed the tenon to fit smoothly but not too tightly. You can see this in the upper part of the photo. Below it is the first side of the stock with the tenon fit into the channel that was milled out. Image 7 And here you can see how the two stock pieces fit together around the tenon. Image 8 With the channels cut the side of one of the stock pieces is colored with black ink and the pieces are glued together and clamped using one of the shank pieces to locate and match the pieces. Image 9 After the glued dried the drawing of the stock was cut from a printout of the sized drawing. I used Scotch Spray Mount to temporarily attach it to the stock blank. With the blank still having a square face the holes were drilled for the treenails and bolts that were used to hold the two halves of the stock together. (You may notice that this piece does not have a square hole for the shank. I forgot to take a photo during construction, so this is a scrap piece made up later for the log). Image 10 The stock was cut close to its profile on the band saw and then smoothed using a sanding drum in the drill press since I do not have a spindle sander. Image 11 The rest of the construction is pretty straightforward. Going back to the photo of the pieces, you can see that the sides of the stock were tapered as shown on the drawings and the treenails inserted and sanded smooth. The shank was fitted to the arm piece and both were smoothed to shape and to fit together at the throat. This was done with the tenon just friction fit in the arm piece. image 3 repeat Once the throat joint was smooth the arm was removed and a step was cut into it for the heel of the fluke. The flukes were cut from 0.025” thick brass sheet, ground to final shape, and then peened to a shallow dish form. They were fitted to the arms and pinned through using iron wire which was clipped short and peened on both ends to rivet the fluke to the arm. Image 12 The stock was given its four iron strapping bands and a coat of stain. The final wood selected for the stock was beech, which looks remarkably like oak in this scale. The shank was painted matte black and was fitted to the stock. The six bolts at the center of the stock were made from iron wire cut a little proud of the surface and filed smooth but not flat. The cut ends will age over time to a generic metallic look that will contrast with the look of the treenails. The ring is made from brass rod that was wound round a dowel, clipped and flattened, then chemically blackened. Here is the completed 13 foot pair. Image 13 Until I built these anchors I had little idea how large they really were. Compared to my scale figure the 13 ½ foot anchor is massive, and even the 8 foot one would have been a handful. The entire set of four anchors weighed over 8,000 pounds. Image 14 Image 15 I’m off to the NRG conference next week, so it may be a bit until my next posting. Until then, let me know if you have any questions about my methods and/or my madness . . . Dan

Hi Toni - Just found your log and read it cover to cover. Really nice work with great dedication to getting it right. I will be using some of your techniques to improve my own work. For bolt heads I use soft iron wire, clip it short and file it round, as you do. I may get a set of the cup burrs since you like them. They are shiny when new, but by the time I am done with the model they age and tarnish to a dull generic metallic look that I like. Will you be bringing Atalanta to Charleston? Love to see her in person. Dan

Hi all – Thanks for your comments and suggestions. I plan to incorporate them into the second iteration of the boat which will be built when the hardwood strips arrive from the supplier. When we left the shipyard the hull of the boat had been fully planked with the shutter planks fitted on both sides. The hull had been marked out in pencil for the rib locations in preparation for the nails which would have fastened the planks to the ribs. Here you can see the lines for all of the ribs that sit square to the keel as well as for the two cant ribs, drawn on the port side of the hull. For the fasteners I had to find a way to make them look right without devoting an excessive amount of time to the task. Since there are 11 planks on each side, 25 rib or transom/stem lines that the planks cross, and two fasteners per crossing, the math says that there have to be 1100 fasteners for the exterior of each boat. Add in some more for the interior work and you can see the magnitude of the problem. The original boat probably had the planks nailed to the ribs, with the ends peened over to clinch them. I experimented with a plank/rib mockup and could never get the holes in the planks to come through the ribs in the proper places. Instead, I decided to drill the holes through only the planks and worry about indicating the nails on the inside of the ribs later. I first drilled all the holes. Here you can see how there are two in each plank in an offset pattern. I used a 0.012” drill, which scales up to 1/2”, which would be about right. At first I tried inserting pieces of annealed iron wire into the holes, clipping them short, painting them with glue, then filing the tops flush with the face of the planks. This was incredibly time consuming and fiddly. I then decided to try the technique of leaving the holes empty, sanding the planks to fill the holes with sawdust, then painting on a finish to hold in the sawdust. This looked good and I don’t believe that anyone can tell the difference with this short cut. * * * Aarrrgh, scalawag that ye are! Ye’ll not be taking any modern short cuts with me boats. I be Dread Pirate Peter, and I’ll have yer guts fer garters if ye dinna do a manly and proper piece of work. No, no, it will be OK. Really it will. Here, this is what the nail holes look like after filling and staining. I have had several critical people, including my wife, compare them to the ones with the iron nails in them and no one could tell the difference. In fact, the slightly spread discoloration of the wood grain closely mimics the way old wood stains when a nail rusts into it. * * * Tis all very well and comely, but rest ye not on yer laurels, lest ye rest on yer ****. I be watching ye. . . * * * Soooo, with that out of the way, I turned to fitting out the interior. First the missing ribs were bent and fitted into the interior. These were the two cant ribs at the bow and the aftmost rib at Station 21 that had been left off to make planking easier. The first interior piece to be installed was the tapered central plank of the flooring. It strengthens the keel and is the location for the lifting rings and mast step. To each side the rest of the floor planks were installed. They are not tapered but fit against the tapered center plank due to the curvature of the hull. They are held in place while the glue dries by inexpensive hair clips from the cosmetics section of the drug store. They initially look like the one at the lower left, but are easily bent by hand to the shape in the lower right. This now allows them to reach around the hull to apply pressure at the tips. Next to be installed are the sheets, the planked platforms at the bow and stern. They will appear in later photos, but I did not take pictures as they were being built. Construction is straightforward. Planks were glued to a pair of battens underneath to make a flat sheet larger than needed. A paper pattern is cut to fit the space and the wood sheet is cut to that shape. The edges are bevelled to match the curve of the hull and it is glued in place to the ribs. Now the thwart stringers are installed. I first bent one piece of stripwood to shape and glued it in on the starboard side at the height indicated on the plans. The matching strip was bent and trimmed for the port side and held in place temporarily while I balanced pieces of stripwood across from side to side and set perpendicular to the keel. These are known in woodworking as ‘winding sticks’ although I don’t know why. Looking across their tops you can easily see any variation from side to side and any tipping compared to the centerline and the edge of the sheets. Once I was satisfied with the levels, the port stringer was glued in place. The plans show square section wood pieces running side to side just under the thwart stringers near the bow and stern. They have a short section in the center that has a round cross section. I do not know what they were for, but perhaps the rounded section would have a halyard led around it when the sail was raised, sort of a non-turning sheave. Whatever they are they were shaped, fitted and glued in. The lifting rings and mast step were located and attached to the central floor plank. I also drilled the nail holes for the floors and sheets as I did for the hull planks. My one regret is that I did not do this for the ribs at this point when they were exposed. It turned out to be too crowded later – a detail that will be corrected on the next boats. The thwarts were cut from 1mm thick stock, with the middle one being wider in the center and having added knees. It holds and supports the metalwork that acts as the mast partner. This fitting is made from brass strip which is chemically blackened, then glued and pinned with wire nails to the edge of the thwart. A decorative beading was scribed into the edges of the thwarts, then they were installed on top of the stringers with spacers between them. Unfortunately, once the thwarts were installed it was clear that they were sitting too high in the boat. No rowers could have sat on them and had their feet reach the floor for leverage. Here the flexibility of the Lineco glue came to my rescue. With the tip of a #10 blade I was able to pry up the thwarts from the stringers and then remove the stringers without any damage to the hull or ribs. The stringers were lowered 6 scale inches and reinstalled, followed by the thwarts, which looked much better after the adjustment. I went back to the plans and determined that the problem was there and not in my measuring or building. Just one of those problems that had to be built to be discovered. Fitting out the rest of the interior is self-explanatory. Working up from the thwarts the stern seats were planked up over battens. They sit on top of the thwart stringers and the aftmost thwart. The foremost thwart has a pair of knees set on top. Square section stringers were fitted and glued to the inner sides of the sheer strake so their tops matched, and were strengthened at the bow by a breasthook and at the stern by two transom knees. Thole blocks were set on top of the sheer strakes and stringers and will be drilled for the thole pins to be added later. The locations of several of these had to be adjusted from the plans, which did not have them at a consistent distance from the associated thwart. The only difficult woodworking came at the bow where the curved and carved fairleads on either side of the stem were joined with a double-dovetailed cross-support. With the boat all but complete the rudder was fashioned to match the plans. Two planks were fitted and tapered, then cut to the proper profile. The pintle straps were made from brass strip, pinned through with iron wire and chemically blackened. The tiller is brass bar that was tapered and blackened, with an epoxy bulb at its tip. Top and bottom gudgeons were fashioned from blackened brass strip. The upper one simply slipped into a hole drilled into the aft face of the sternpost, while the lower one had to be bent in several directions before being pinned against the sides of the sternpost. It only remained for the thole pins to be installed and the boat was complete. * * * So ye think ye be quite clever, do ye? Quite the boat builder? I be the judge of that. I also bring me great-great-great grandson Peter who says he has worked with ye before. He be a great galoot of a puppy, but he be useful to judge yer work. He set up this temporary mast and I grant ye that said boat be mightily even side to side. He sits well in the stern and nothing pulls my eye to say that he could not reach and steer the tiller, should he take it into his head to do some work, the lazy lout that he be. It shivers me innards to grudge ye my approval, but i’ faith I canna find much to dislike. But be warned that I will no be put off with such minor success. Ye must do as well or better, or feel me wrath fall upon ye like to the Trump of Doom. Well, there you have it. The second boat will be made from hardwoods now that most of the construction problems have been identified, although I am sure that new ones will appear and demand solutions. Those may be harder to find while looking over my shoulder all the time; Dread Pirate Peter seems to have very high standards, and a very short temper. Till then, be well. Dan

Very nice work in a larger scale. I'm willing to spend a few years following your journey. Are you fairing the insides of the frames as you go along, or will you wait till the exteriors are faired? Dan .

Gas spectrometry, a fascinating suggestion and worth much more than two cents. I don't know if the conservators have any plans to get it done, but that's a good question to send them through the website. I would be very interested in what they tell you. As for scale - yes, I believe that it has something to do with the final display space. It's a clumsy scale to work in with 1 inch = 3 feet. It scales down very awkwardly with 1/8" = 4 and a half inches and 1mm = 1.5 inches Dan

Thanks for the feedback - AVS in Jerome (sorry, don't know your name) - I am following the research done by those better at that than I, and with better access to primary documents. If you go to the Queen Anne's Revenge website you can access the reports by these researchers as well as graduate dissertations that synthesize and analyze them. From these it is pretty clear that the ship was built in a French (possibly Dutch, but unlikely) shipyard for a private business run by the Montaudoin family. Here is the link to the doctoral dissertation by Mark Wilde-Ramsing. http://wayback.archive-it.org/org-67/20120515002435/http://www.qaronline.org/techSeries/QAR-R-09-02.pdf Druxey - I find spiling by eye to be so much faster and easier than trying to do it mechanically and mathematically. I used to do the whole proportional divider and tick strip thing, only to find that I was fairing the resulting planks by eye anyway. Now I just select my basic plank width at the point of maximum breadth and adjust from there. Actually, this is quite close to how full sized wooden boats are built, even up to 100 foot yachts such as the Coronet, now being restored at the International Yacht Restoration School in Newport, RI (a wonderful detour if you are down that way). You can read about this process in a very funny and captivating book about the Benjamin & Gannon shipyard on Martha's Vineyard called "Wooden Boats" by Michael Ruhlman, who is now a well-known food writer. As for the ribs, I had the same thought, but this is not the light pinnace or Admiral's launch, but a heavy workboat that had to withstand being knocked around and grounded on strange shores. All of the scantlings were probably a bit thick. As you will see, once the floors, thwarts and seats are installed the ribs look well proportioned. At least I think so. Dan

Good day to all - This segment will be a bit of a detour from where I left the hull construction last time. The sheer size of the model means that I have to work on it in the basement of the family’s weekend house near Albany, NY. There is no way that I can fit it into the shipyard in the Brooklyn apartment, which is a converted walk-in closet. I haven’t been up to the house in several weeks, so I am working on smaller pieces here in the city that can be added later. The first of these are the ship’s boats. As always, there are half a dozen good ways to get the job done. Here is mine. The recitation is quite long, so I have broken it up into two parts. The first will cover the shaping and planking of the hull, and the second will finish with the fitting out of the interior. The Mercure drawings that I am working from include plans and schematics for two boats, a large launch (boat 7) and a sleek pinnace (boat 6). Here I will be building the launch. The drawings had been sent to me as .tif files, so it was easy to drop them into Photoshop and start manipulating them. First I used the rule stick in the hand of the little gnome dancing on the page to scale the drawing to the size of the model. I cropped and copied the forward and aft station lines portions of the plans and moved them to a new blank image. Identical square outlines were superimposed around the two drawings to give them the same registration planes and centerlines. Once I was happy that everything was square and aligned correctly they were copied repeatedly to fill a page sized image and printed out several times to get one image for each of the 21 stations shown on the profile and cross section plans. These were cut apart and glued with spray mount to squares of 1/8” wood sheet. The outline at each station was cut out with a notch for the keel and shoulders at the sheer. The three in the upper right are standing up because they have already had spacers glued to their back sides like the one in the upper left. These are used with the building board, which is marked out for the centerline and each numbered station. The station formers are glued to the board and to each other one at a time with a top spacer used to keep them at the proper distance and an engineer’s square to see that they are perfectly vertical. While the glue was drying on the developing stack of formers the two strongbacks (stem-keel-sternpost) were cut out. It is somewhat weaker to do it this way, as you end up with cross-grain on the stem and sternpost, but it is faster, and this boat is something of a test bed for techniques. For the same reason, the wood used is almost exclusively basswood. It is easy to work, glues well, and when stained correctly is almost impossible to distinguish from a close-grained hardwood. The portion of the plans showing the longitudinal cross section was mounted on an 1/8” wood sheet which was then glued to a second sheet, with the glue placed only where the wood would be chucked. The outline of the strongback was cut out on the band saw, leaving a glued central piece to be cut last. This yielded two identical pieces that came apart as soon as the last cut was completed. Here is the completed stack of formers on the building board with one of the strongbacks temporarily set up in the notch for the keel. It goes without saying that once the stack was fully glued it was shaped and faired with sanding rods to get smooth curves from bow to stern. The strongback is held vertically with small blocks at the bow and stern that sandwich the tops at the centerline. Two transom pieces were taken from the plans, laid out and cut as before, and each was test fit into the notch cut for it at the base of the sternpost. The location of the forward edge of the plank rabbet was determined and marked out on the strongback, then the small extensions that had been left above the stem and sternpost were trimmed until it snuggled down into the keel notch at the proper level. The strongback was removed and the rabbet was carved along the line with rotary bitts, then finished with files and rifflers. The transom was planked on the outside and glued in place against the sternpost. Now I fit the ribs to the station formers. It was a happy fact that Budriot drew the boat with a rib at each station line and a station line at each rib. To make room for them I had cut out the station formers a little inside the line, and the sanding and fairing had further reduced the breadth of the stack. The ribs were fairly thin in any case, made from wood strips milled to 1mm x 2mm (about 1.5” x 3” in scale”). These were soaked in water to soften, then bent around each former and wired in place. No glue was used. All of the ribs were wired in place except the aftmost one at Station 21. Leaving it off gave me a little more flexibility in fairing the planks to the transom. The strongback was replaced in the keel notch of the formers and the initial two planks were shaped. The first was the sheer strake. From the plans it measured out to exactly ¼” in width and was left full width its entire length. A strip of basswood that width and 1/16” thick was soaked for a few minutes, then shaped first at the bow, where the tip was cut and angled to fit into the rabbet. The forward few inches were steam bent using an Amati plank bender (the one that looks like a soldering iron with a nautiloid shaped head). It is 25 years old and still works a treat. Using the shoulders cut into the formers at the sheer the plank was edge bent to match the curve before being clamped and glued to each rib and the transom. The garboard strake against the keel was similarly fitted and glued. However, when I tried to impose the required twists into a basswood plank it repeatedly splintered. I therefore used pau marfim, a California hardwood. It is also ¼” wide for most of its length but flares to about twice that at the sternpost. To accommodate this, a tapered plank was pieced in from Station 15 to the sternpost. When I was happy with the look of the shape it was clamped and glued to the ribs. Here is what they looked like with most of the clamps removed. A word here about stains and glues. Before any piece was installed it was given a staining with a mixture of ½ clear Minwax wood stain which they call Natural, ¼ Early American and ¼ Cherry. I find this combination the best to reduce any splotchiness in the basswood and makes basswood resemble boxwood or one of the lighter cherry varieties, a look that I like a lot. However, the stain is a bit oily, so the wood has to be well wiped and has to dry for a while before normal PVA glues will hold well. As for glue, I use a pH neutral white glue made by Lineco which I used to get from an art conservation supply house. It sets up fast and holds well, yet is still flexible for an extended time, which will come in handy later. Now I get it through Amazon where it is competitively priced with carpenters’ wood glues. This process was repeated for the second sheer plank and the first broad strake against the garboard, but these had to be tapered to fit at the bow. I knew from test fittings with strips of paper that there was almost exactly half the space between the garboard and sheer strake at the bow than there was between these planks amidships. Therefore the next two planks were tapered for their forward three inches to that dimension. Holding the plank to the formers and letting it find its own best fit, it was evident that the tapering on the second sheer strake should come off the edge that mated with the sheer strake, while the broad strake should taper on the garboard side. After the bulk of the wood was removed the edge was sanded to a fair curve. This spiling was all done by eye, with the curve examined from every angle and refined as needed on this and every successive plank. Once acceptably shaped the planks were stained, then caulking was indicated by coloring the uncut edge of the plank with an indelible black marker. The planks were bent to final shape, fitted, glued and clamped in place. With two strakes at the keel and two at the sheer, the cage of ribs had a good deal of strength and rigidity. Now all of the wires were pulled out and the developing hull was removed from the formers. I must have done a clean job with the glue because I didn’t have to pry it loose at any point. Subsequent strakes were processed in a similar way. For clamps I used bulldog clips that had a handle piece from a second clip fitted into the top of the clip. A modified clip was used on every other former to hold the plank to the ribs as the glue dried. Here is what the hull looked like with 8 of the 11 strakes in place. At this point the remaining space was divided into thirds as you can see from the pencil marks on the ribs. This would be filled with two standard width planks and one custom fit ‘shutter plank’ that closed in the hull. Here is one completed side. The shutter plank location was selected to lie just under the curve of the chine of the hull, making it less visible than any other spot. It is the fourth from the keel. It is slightly wider than the other planks and flares at the stern to fill the larger space. While it was on the formers the location of each rib was penciled onto the planks in preparation for the ‘nails’ holding the planks to the ribs. Once the other side was closed up the hull was removed from the formers. I think the method worked quite well and resulted in a hull that is strong, symmetric, and gives a convincing appearance of an actual boat structure. The white plastic figure in the corner is useful to judge scale appearance and will appear again. Spiling the planking by eye in this way is an acquired skill, but not difficult if each plank is critically examined and adjusted as needed. The final hull has a nice run of planking that tapers smoothly to the stem and matches, port to starboard, and even has the little variations in width that a real boat does. In the next installment I use the penciled lines to drill the nail holes for the more than 1100 fasteners used for the hull planks. Then I fit out the interior and finish the boat. As always, critical review by the eyes of my peers is requested. This is even more so in this case since the boat is the first generation attempt and, despite the work and time invested, may not make the final cut. Looking forward to hearing from all. Dan