shipmodel

Mark - Thanks for the links. The photos make a good addition to the information from the models in the Musee de la Marine. I am absorbing the French style and learning their rigging techniques. I've also gotten many specific details from three dissertations on the excavation of La Belle at Texas A&M. They are online and make a wonderful reference for late 17th, early 18th century French practice. chj - Thanks for the compliment. Glad you're enjoying it. I am making two copies of the same figurehead. One for each of the two QAR models that I'm making. It is adapted from the lion figurehead in Budriot's plans for Le Mercure. Dan

Mark - I'm back on board and ready to enjoy the journey as you heave the capstan, splice the mainbrace, pay the devil, and all that other nautical stuff. Dan

The next deck fitting that I made was the quarterdeck companionway. On Budriot’s plans for Le Mercure it is a raised structure with hinged doors (#24) forward of the mizzen mast (#25) and aft of the watchkeeper's bench (#23). It houses the stairway that leads down to the gun deck and the captain’s cabin. As will be discussed later, I have followed the NMM plans of the Advice Prize for the overall structure rather than Le Mercure. This raises the captain’s cabin to the quarterdeck and eliminates the chicken coop (#27), the whipstaff slot (#26) and the cabinets (#28 and #29). With the changed layout there is some question if the large companionway would still have been on deck if the captain would not be using it, or would it have been more of a simple open hatchway, perhaps with an open railing? The answer is unclear, but since there is some justification for retaining it, I am doing so. Here are Budriot’s plans. I have followed them, except that the strap hinges on the roof have been modified a little to make them stronger. Construction was pretty straightforward. A coaming was built with lap jointed corners in the same way that the hatch coamings were made. Three sides were fashioned with birch planks over a solid sheet to fit inside the coaming. Internal corners were strengthened with square stock and the external corners were dressed up with cherry veneer. A crosspiece was fitted and glued at the top edge of the structure to keep it all square. This is the stage of construction on the right. On the left the two planked sections of the roof and the front doors have been added and the piece is complete, except for a final stain and finish. The bottom of the coaming has been left square unstill it is installed on the slanted and cambered quarterdeck. Here is it from an oblique viewpoint so you can see all the details. The construction techniques are fairly simple and incorporate a number that have been discussed in dealing with prior fittings and structures. The only new technique is for the hinges. I started with 1/16” brass strip (2” wide in scale) and bent one end around on itself using a needle-nosed wire bending pliers. You can get these from dental supply houses, or from your child’s orthodontist. Once it is bent around on itself, it is tightened up as much as possible. Using this strip the smallest eye that I could form was about 0.028” i.d. I decided that this was acceptable in this scale. The hinge strap was pre-drilled for 0.020” iron pins that will secure it to the wood. Here I have marked out the locations of the holes and the strap length for the door hinges. After drilling, the hinge was parted off from the strip and chemically blackened. Here it is installed on the door. You can see the iron pins that go through the door and were clipped off short. The hinge sits on an “L” shaped piece of wire that goes into the doorpost. The hinges for the roof were made in the same way, except that the straps are longer. Two matching hinges were installed facing each other and a pin was epoxied into the outer one with the inner one allowed to rotate freely. Here is the completed companionway with Pirate Pete inspecting its quality. And here it is with the doors ajar, ready for Pete to descend the stairs. It was probably not necessary to make the doors operable, but it is one of those little details that keeps up my interest. I will know that it is there, even if the doors never move after it is displayed in the museum. Be well Dan

Mark - Thanks so much for answering that question. I will have to look harder around the internet to see other examples of the bench. If you can point me to a site or two, that would be great. I linked to your build log of La Licorne, which is much like the QAR and only a little earlier. I was sorry to see that you have abandoned the first version for a second, but I am sure that the next one will be up to your high standards. In the meanwhile, I hope that I can pick your brains again if I am stumped on a detail. Dan

Mark - I got to your log from your response to my question on the log of the QAR. Like all logs when I first find them, I started on page 1 and read forward to the current pages. I was very impressed with all the good work that went into the frames and interior deck details. I commisserated with all the others when you cut your fingers, and cheered, quietly, when you solved the knotty construction problems of the large pumps and the spiled planking. So I was shocked to read on page 32 that you decided to abandon the model. So much great work. I know that it must have been a difficult decision, but if it is right for you, then it is all for the best. I hope you can save a lot of your detail work and sub-assemblies. Best of success with Licorne v.2. Charting your progress from the Constellation and cross-section models to here, I am sure that it will be up to your high standards. I look forward to much pleasurable reading as she rises from the building board. Dan

Thanks, Vic. Nicely stated, not understated at all. Thanks too for the likes. This week I got some work done on the hull despite the snow. The wooden plates of the upper hull have been cut and bent to the required shapes. The portion from the stern to the end of the waist is fairly flat, with a consistent 13 degree tumblehome. It was cut, fitted to the rabbet cut into the solid lower hull, and screwed in place. Temporary support blocks were fitted to the inside face which also support the dummy quarterdeck that you can see in the photos. The transom piece has been cut and temporarily fitted in place as well. The bow section is much more complex. In place of the open bow deck with a flat beakhead bulkhead, the ship had a closed bow. At the waist it has the 13 degree tumblehome, but at the cathead it actually has an outward flare as if it were still open. Then when it comes around to the stem it is vertical. To accommodate these requirements, the foredeck corners are bumped out, making it less rounded and the deck overhangs the lower hull. I derived the shape of the quarterdeck from the plans and cut a dummy deck. This was mounted at the correct height on a sturdy block and screwed into the solid lower hull on the centerline. Rough patterns were cut from cardstock and transferred to ¼” basswood, which was cut oversize at the top. Multiple dados 3/16” deep were cut across the pieces, closer together at the tight bend at the corner. The pieces were wet for an hour in a bucket of water, then forced into shape in the hull rabbet and against the dummy foredeck. They were screwed in place and the top line marked out above the foredeck. The pieces were removed and trimmed, then reinstalled and left to dry. This is where you see it in the photos, with a dummy stem piece in place. Although I have never used this method of both kerf and wet bending together in a model hull, it seems to be working out pretty well. Meanwhile, I continued with some of the deck pieces that will be needed. Here is the bench that sits on the quarterdeck for the captain’s convenience. I’ve never seen this before, but Budriot has it on the plans. If anyone has seen such a fitting, I would be very interested. Here are his drawings. And here is how the completed bench looks, with some of the components. The primary wood is birch, with cherry veneer for the accent work and arms. The arms were built up of four layers of veneer stacked vertically. The outer layers of the horizontal pieces for the arm are sandwiched around two vertical pieces for the post. On the right is the arm piece shaped oversize to the desired curve. On the left it has been trimmed to shape. Here is the first one completed from another angle. And here are the finished pair with my scale figures for comparison. I also set up for the four ladders which will connect the gun deck at the waist with the gangways between the quarterdeck and foredeck. They have only four treads but are wider at the base than at the top. As you can see in the photo, my ladder technique is to make a long box from which separate ladders can be parted off individually. Two matching rectangular pieces for the stringers have dados cut across the grain. A web of veneer sheet woods are fit into these slots for the treads. The grain runs across from stringer to stringer. Sorry, this enlargement did not come out too well, but you can see how the dados are cut halfway through the stringer material. The ladder block was set up so everything was square or, rather, symmetrical until the glue hardened. A ladder was parted off on the band saw at the calculated angle, cleaned up, and finished. This angle might not be right, so I only made one to test. Whatever the ultimate angle, the rest of the block should be enough for at least the four needed for the first model. I will need a pair of longer ladders from the quarterdeck up to the poop deck on top of the captain’s cabin, and a wider one from the quarterdeck companionway down to the gun deck. They will be made in much the same way. The companionway itself will be next. Be well Dan

Beautiful as always, Doris. Just beautiful work. Could you tell me what adhesive you use to attach the clay pieces to each other and to the model, and how you finish them after installation. There is never a trace of glue around the tiny parts. Thanks. The helmsman is looking good too. The hat will be a nice touch. Since this is a royal yacht, and there are high-ranking people aboard, I think that he would be dressed in his best uniform most of the time. Dan

Hello again – I got some time during the football games to write up the next installment. I hope you enjoy it. With the grating sheets made, I made the coamings. My method here also relies on the table saw and uses no measuring with a ruler. This time it is based on the specific grating to be framed. I make the coaming to fit the grating rather than the other way around. I get a much tighter fit that way. Here is a piece of grating that has been cut from a sheet. The edges have been sanded flush and it has received a first finish coat to protect it from any glue stains. It looks square, but it is slightly longer than it is wide. As mentioned, the grating material is poplar. For contrast I selected cherry for the coaming and cut stock 1/8” x ¼”. Four pieces of coaming stock were cut longer than each side of the grating piece. They will be joined with half lap joints at the corners. The table saw blade height is set so cuts made from the top and bottom of the coaming stock just meet in the middle. One end of each piece has a half lap cut into it. The length does not matter as long as it is longer than the thickness of the coaming stock. First, the shoulder was cut using the rip fence as a depth stop. Then the lap was made by making multiple passes moving away from the fence to nibble away the unwanted wood. A spacer strip was located that was wider but shallower than the lap that was cut. Using the spacer and the grating piece the fence was set for the shorter sides. A sacrificial stick supports the coaming piece as the shoulder for the second half lap is cut. The coaming piece was turned around and the unwanted wood from the second lap was nibbled away. The matching short piece was done, then the saw was reset and the longer pieces were done in the same manner. Using the grating piece itself to hold the pieces square, they were test fit, adjusted as needed, assembled and glued. When the glue was dry, support pieces were glued to the inside edges. Doing only two sides is enough. If you want the grating to be removable just make sure that the supports are glued only to the coaming. Here I have glued the grating in place permanently. The corners were trimmed, the piece was turned over and sanded smooth, and all edges and corners were eased. The bottom edges are left raw and will be sanded to the curve of the deck when installed. The piece was finished with matte varnish. And here is the set of three for one of the QAR models. In the insert the lap joint is clearly visible. The joints were also treenailed for strength. Two diagonal corners of each coaming were drilled but not filled. During assembly longer treenails will go through them and into the deck for security. A length of treenail stock is packed with the set ready for final assembly. As you can tell from the brevity of the text, this all goes quite quickly with a some practice. All of the work making the six hatches and gratings took only a little more than a day. Doing the photographing and writing these build log entries took longer. I hope that this was instructive and provides another technique to add to your tool box. Be well Dan

Hi all, and thanks for the comments and likes. The next set of independent pieces to be made were the three hatches with gratings. One two-part one goes on the quarterdeck, while the other two go on the gun deck under the boat in the waist. My method for making gratings is a bit unusual in that it there is little or no measuring done with a ruler or calipers. Everything is done relative to the thickness of the saw blade that is used. I developed this method because I only have a Preac saw. A milling machine might make the whole process easier, but I work with what I have. The first thing is to set up the saw to make square section sticks of wood whose dimension will be about 2 inches in the scale being used. This then has to match the thickness of a saw blade that you have. For the small grating I used a slitting saw blade that was 0.032” thick. To set the saw I sandwiched that blade between a second blade and the rip fence. The fence is snugged up and locked down. The cutting blade does not have to be the same thickness, although in this case it was since I have two blades of that same thickness. [These first nine photos are in black and white because they are taken from another presentation on making much smaller gratings]. Several sticks 0.032” square were cut from a sheet of hardwood. Only a few are needed. Then the blade that matches the sticks is mounted in the saw, if it is not already there. Two of the sticks are sandwiched between the blade and the fence which is snugged tight and locked down. One stick is removed and a short section of the other is held firmly against the fence and tacked in place with extra thin cyano. Care is taken to see that the fence is not glued to the table. The fence is removed, leaving a guide strip parallel to the blade and one blade thickness to the right. A rectangular piece of hardwood sheet is selected and held against the guide strip and the miter guage. The blade height is set up to cut just a tiny bit deeper than halfway through the sheet. The wood is run over the blade, cutting a channel one blade thickness from the end. The wood is flipped over and the slot that was just cut is placed on top of the guide strip. The wood is run through again, cutting a second channel two thicknesses to the left of the first channel. The balance of the sheet is cut in the same way, making a series of channels parallel to each other and spaced two blade widths apart. Here is the grating sheet for the QAR. At my scale I needed sticks and channels that were about 0.055”. I took one of the 0.032” blades and stacked it together with a 0.023” blade, making a 0.055” dado blade. Actually, for the small grating I used Portia Takakjian’s technique. This involves cutting lots of square sticks as well as cutting cross channels across the first ones. The cross channels are filled with the sticks and everything is glued together. When dry the solid back of the sheet is ground off with a sanding drum. This works well for a small grating, but the wider blade did not cut as cleanly so I kept getting tearout. Also, I needed more than 25 square inches of grating and did not look forward to grinding off so much wood. Instead, I removed the guide strip and set the saw to cut 0.55” using the blades as spacers again. Strips were parted off the sheet until the material was used up. I call them toothed strips for obvious reasons. Three quarters of the toothed strips were cut into thirds and interlocked with the remaining long strips. This created a grating sheet about 2 ½ by 7 ½ inches. This was only enough to make the gratings for one of the models, so a second grating sheet was made in the same way. From the sheets I cut out sections for the grating sizes that I needed, sanded the edges flush and gave them a coat of slightly darkened matte finish to protect them from glue stains when the coamings get built around them. Overall, this method worked well for me, and I will try it in smaller scales in the future. A tip of the hat to Charlie Files, inventor of the Preac, wherever you are. I will have the log of making the coamings in a few days. Until then, be well. Dan

Hello and Happy New Year to all - This past month has been full of grandkids and holidays that got in the way of what is the most important thing in life - ship modeling I did manage to complete both sets of the masts, which are packed away until rigging time. The fore The mizzen And the Bowsprit and jib boom Meanwhile, I have been studying the rigging diagrams and reading Anderson and others. The first question came when I realized that some of the lines, including the halyards, run from the mastheads to belaying points on deck at the base of the mast. To do this they have to pass through the platform of the top. Budriot's plans and the tops that I made from them have no openings aft of the masthead. I figured that I could solve this in one of two ways - I could simply drill some holes for the lead of the lines, or I could take apart the tops and remove some of the planking to make a larger opening, a much more complicated procedure. I consulted with some knowledgable modelers including Rob Napier, and Bob Giles sent me some photographs of the tops of the St. George (1701) model at Annapolis. I also looked at the photographs of the model of Le Sans-Pareil (1757) in the Musee de la Marine. All of them agreed that removing the planking was the only way to go. So, with some anxiety, I pried off the trestletrees and crosstrees from under each of the tops. Fortunately they came away with only one slight greenstick fracture that was easily repaired. The cleats were shortened, then I used a razor saw to cut through the plank aft of the lubber hole. The enlarged opening was cleaned up with a blade and sandpaper before the trestletrees and crosstrees were cleaned up and re-attached. Here they are. Next, the gratings and coamings. I have worked out a new way to do them which gives me better results in this larger scale. Be well Dan

Hi Daniel - and Happy New Year - Coming along nicely at such a small scale. Budriot's plans show a very tall stern with two banks of high windows. That does not fit with the Advice Prize draught, so I lowered the transom in Photoshop and got this. Perhaps it will be of some help to you. Be well Dan

Coming along very nicely, Ron. It looks like it will be a Happy New Year for you. Dan

Welcome back, Doris - Seeing your work again was a wonderful Holiday present. Like Floyd's wife, mine has become jaded with all the "ho-hum" just another ship model, but she is always eager and excited to see your postings and the beauty of your work. She thanks you too. Be well Dan

Hi Ron - Coming along very nicely. The symmetry and the evenness of the reveals is well done. Looking forward to seeing it completed. Dan

Hi Ron - As Remco says, you have to start with some pretty wide stock to get the proper spiled shape for the final planks. And with clinker planking you don't have the freedom to make adjustments the way you do with carvel hulls. I found it incredibly useful when I was building the hull of the Thames River Skiff to cut each plank shape out of cardstock before committing to wood. I generated a lot of scraps, but learned where the difficulties were going to be and what wierd shapes I needed to get a fair hull with even and consistent reveals from plank to plank. Best holiday wishes to you and yours. Dan

Hi Michael - Excellent clean and precise work, as usual. I was wondering what the scale height of the fife rail is from the deck. It looks to be no more than a foot (assuming the belaying pins are about 18" long).. Would this be a useable height? I am not familiar with real boats like this, so it certainly could be right. It just looks strange to me compared with fife rails that I know from earlier ships. Dan

Hi Daniel - I think that the most definitive history of the ship has been done by the team at the North Carolina Maritime Museum which is excavating the ship underwater in Beaufort Inlet. They, along with the North Carolina Department of Cultural Affairs, has commissioned a number of researchers and enlisted any number of grad students, here and in France, to comb the records to see what can be found. It appears that she was built in or around 1710 to the plans of a small French frigate as a privateer for a French merchant family to be used during Queen Anne's War (1708-1711). Once the war ended the family went into the slave/privateering trade. The ship would leave France for the west coast of Africa to pick up slaves, transport them to the French posessions in the Carribean, then return to France, picking up any prizes she could on the way home. On her third slaving trip she was captured by Blackbeard. All this and much more is in the report written by Mark Wilde-Ramsing, PhD, which incorporates much of that research and his own doctoral dissertation. You can find it here http://wayback.archive-it.org/org-67/20120515002435/http://www.qaronline.org/techSeries/QAR-R-09-02.pdf This doesn't change a lot from your conception of the ship, but I hope it is of some interest. I'll be looking forward to your progress. Happy Holidays to you and yours. Dan

Daniel - Add my compliments to all the others. Really nice work at a really small scale. I agree with your color choices although I might have gone with a brown/natural look for the sides of the hull. QAR had been a slaver for several years before being captured by Blackbeard, and I don't think that slave ship owners would waste money on paint, and pirates even less so. It's a real help for me to see someone else's conception of the ship as I work my way through the masts and fittings. A very Merry Christmas to all . . . Dan

Ron - You do all that great work without a table saw? My hat is definitely off to you. I could not function without my Preac. Dan

Hi Ron - The plug is looking good. But cutting a notch for the keel-stem-sternpost in the curved block is going to be really, really hard to get straight. Don't ask how I know this . . . :-)) Let me suggest that while you still have a flat and straight face to the block opposite the keel that you use a table saw and slice the block in half along the centerline. Make the saw kerf the width of your keel. Sandwich a keel-width thickness sheet of wood as a spacer between the plug halves and you will have a straight slot ready for the keel pieces. Dan

Hi Michael - Your cove and hollow system is similar to how I used to make tambour doors for rolltop desks and kitchen counter appliance garages. I used to have a set of router bits that were bought as a matching pair and did quick work of the task. I believe that the worked down to 1/8", but it was a long time ago. I believe that I got them from Constantines' in NYC, which is now out of business, but maybe Rockler has something similar. Just another thought from another Dan.

Michael - Yet another excellent and impressive project. Count me in as an appreciative observer. Where do you find the time and energy for all these projects at the same time? Do you sleep at all? Dan

Hello again. I trust that everyone has recovered from Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and all that tryptophan in the turkey. Not to mention all the family that may have descended on you as they did to us. I have a greater appreciation than ever for the wit and wisdom of Winston Churchill. . . I did manage to get in some work on the hull. The lower portion of the first hull was fully shaped using templates as usual. The aft portion of the gun deck was built up with tapered stacks of basswood to match the rise of the sheer line, then sanded down to make a smooth curved surface at the centerline. A camber (round-up) of the deck of 1/8" from the centerline to the bulwark edge was plotted from the plans. I marked and sanded this into the gun deck surface. When I was happy with the underwater shape and the deck curves, the hull was given its first coat of sandable primer. Rough areas, uneven curves, and other problem spots were dealt with and re-primed. Although the hull will probably be tweaked some more, I started working out the bulwarks and hull sides above the gun deck. Here you can see that the main bulwarks have been cut from 1/4" basswood to the shape taken from the NMM draught. From the transom and taffrail to a point just aft of the forecastle the ship's sides were a consistently flat shape. There will be some curves sanded into them later, and they will be bent to match the perimeter of the deck, but for the internal support, the basswood pieces are more than adequate. At this point they are still flat and straight. They sit with a tumblehome of 13 degrees using the blocks and clamps to get and idea of what they will look like and how they will fit. Here I am cutting the rabbet that the bulwarks will sit in. Since I do not have a router, I cut the horizontal channel using the Dremel grinding disc. I have the large circular saw blade, but the thought of freehanding the cut with the agressive teeth was a little too scary. It took a good deal longer, but if I had slipped I figured that all I would get would be a sanding injury, not an opened vein. Once the horizontal channel was ground, I used a wood chisel to make the vertical cuts that removed wood and established the rabbet. It was cleaned up with sanding blocks, then the inside face was angled to match the tumblehome. Back in Brooklyn I returned to the masts. Here are the two topmast blanks. As shown on the plans, the mast shaft is offset towards the aft edge of the square heel. In the photo you can see that I used the Preac to cut down the forward face of the square blank. At the heel you can see it more clearly. The port and starboard faces of the stick were cut down half the amount that the forward face was, which squared up the stick again. Now I could mark it out, cut the tenon with the table saw, then plane it octagonal as was done with the lower mast. The square stick was shaped to a cylinder. Then the upper and lower edges of the wider section that holds up the trestletrees was cut on the table saw. I whittled the wood down till it matched the cut channels. Then the balance of the wood was removed with sanding drums, sanding sticks and sandpaper. At the heel you can see the construction sequence clearly. The three sides are reduced with the table saw, then shaped with the sanding drum to fair the offset round shaft to the square heel. Once the heel is shaped, a fid hole is drilled through and squared up with a needle file. Two mock sheaves are drilled and shaped on an angle that ultimately lines up with eyebolts on the cap. These are for the leads of the lifting ropes. The completely shaped topmasts were give a coat of finish and set aside. The mast caps were shaped from the plans from pear. They have the Continental humped form, with holes and grooves along the edges of the cap for the lifting ropes. They were made from a forward and aft piece, with a notched seam held together with iron straps. Straps also crossed the bottom, fore and aft faces of the cap. Here is the blank with the hole for the topmast drilled. The other has been shaped and the seam between the forward and aft pieces scribed as before. The piece was finished and the straps glued on. The straps were drilled for 0.020" iron wire pins. These were inserted and cut off long before being glued. Once the glue dried they were cut almost flat, then peened smooth. Four eyebolts were drilled and mounted on the underside of the cap through the supporting straps and the caps were complete. The topmast trestletrees were cut and shaped to match the plans. The crosstrees were shaped from wider pieces of wood so they could splay out, then half-lapped into the trestletrees. Holes for the shroud lines were drilled before they were tapered per the plans, then finished. The topmast cap was cut and shaped much like the lower caps, but these were one piece units with iron straps that could be opened when the topgallant mast was taken down. This is useful, because the truck at the masthead won't fit through the opening without opening the strap. So here are all the components of both main masts. The second topmast, the upper one in the photo, had a knot in it that took up the stain badly. I will minimize it with a darker finish, but in the fullness of time it will be replaced and used as one of the spare spars that will fit along the open waist in the finished ship. Here they are all set up. From the deck the mast reaches some 31 inches to the truck. This is going to be one mother of a fully rigged model. There will probably be a longer break until my next post. I will be building the foremasts, which are almost identical to the main masts, so no new techniques will be used. I will be back when they are done. Happy Holidays to all. Dan

Ron - Really nice work. There is a growing impression of standing on deck of a real ship. Is that Woolsey supervising the work, or Christian Bergh, or even James Fennimore Cooper? Woolsey Bergh Cooper Thanks for sharing your excellent work. Dan

Hi Daniel - What a treat to see a real miniature of the model I am working on. You are really capturing the essence of the ship in a really tiny way. As for scale, my model will be 36.5 inches when measured on perpendiculars from the top of the taffrail to the front of the stem, which is what I see for your model. Multiplied by my scale this gives a length for the actual ship of 1314 inches, or 109.5 feet. If your model is one inch long, give or take a bit, I don't think you would be far wrong to say that it is 1:1250, which is a common miniature scale. I've bookmarked your build and look forward to future installments. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. Dan