Dr PR

There are many opinions about this. However the discussion in this link tells that belaying pins were in use in Europe in the early 1600s: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/21834-more-on-belaying-pins/?do=findComment&comment=653870

The ship needs a helm! I certainly wouldn't use water - it might soak into the century dry wood and cause swelling. And as a microbiologist I cringe at the thought of covering anything with spit! Not a good idea in my opinion, even if it does "work." Just brushing with a small stiff brush may be all that is needed. I do this with the end of a vacuum cleaner hose nearby (3-6 inches/75-150 mm). But be careful that some parts - like hatch covers - are not just resting in place unattached. Otherwise you may end up sorting through the dust in the vacuum cleaner bag. If a liquid cleaner is needed to dislodge stuff I think I would apply isopropanol (rubbing alcohol) with a small brush and immediately swab it up with a Q-tip. The alcohol will evaporate quickly. But use it very sparingly and work fast so it doesn't have time to dissolve any finishes (especially shellac). Test this first in an inconspicuous place!

Thanks! But it looks a bit nicer after it has been polished with #0000 steel wool! I have added the cap to the stack, and the bead that runs along the top edge of the cap. The edge of the 0.005 inch (0.13 mm) thick stack cap rests precisely on the top edge of the 0.005 inch thick stack shell. And the 0.030 inch (0.76 mm) copper wire bead rests on the top edge of the cap. I know this looks difficult, but it is actually a lot easier than you might think! The trick is pretty simple: start by attaching the two pieces just right at one place. I started at the front edge and used clamps and tape, repositioning until the cap was aligned perfectly at that one spot. Then I applied a bit of liquid citrus solder flux and a tiny amount of solder. GOTCHA! Once the two pieces are fixed together permanently at one spot they can't come apart and it is pretty easy to pull them together correctly at another place a short distance from the first. Then solder another spot, move on a short distance, align them again and solder another spot, and so on. This "stitches" the two pieces together. Just be certain to put heat sink clamps between the new solder place and the previous one to prevent heat from travelling back and unsoldering the previous spot. For the wire bead I modified a small wooden "clothes pin" clamp to have a narrow point with a 0.033 inch (0.84 mm) hole drilled between the two parts of the tip. When this was clamped over the wire and top edge of the cap it held the wire centered on the edge. Because it was wooden I could solder right up to the clamp without soldering it to the assembly. If I was really good at this I could have soldered everything from the inside without leaving the solder stain on the exterior. I have seen some amazing brass locomotives that were soldered together with no solder showing from the outside. But I am not that good. The stack will be painted gray with a black top, so the stain won't be visible in the finished piece. This is how I spent my Christmas day (plus some housekeeping). The Admiral's family all got together last Sunday for an early Christmas, and tomorrow my side of the family has another Christmas with the kids, grandkids and a horde of great grandkids. Happy Holidays!

Harvey, Nice recovery! It looks very nice. Happy holidays!

I finally got up the courage to roll the smoke stack shell and add on the base ring and upper plate. I could imagine any number of ways this could go wrong, but it assembled without much trouble! The templates from the 3D CAD model worked perfectly. The shell rolled up to just the right dimensions for the top plate and base ring to fit correctly! First I soldered the 11 vent pipes into the top plate. I still need to make the conical cover for the large boiler vent. And I think I have figured out a way to make the hinges for the cover flaps for the diesel exhaust pipes. The caps are just 0.127 inch/3.2 mm diameter so the hinges will be very small! I had to do a small amount of fitting to get the top plate to squeeze into the shell at a scale 7 inches (0.146 inch/3.7 mm) below the top edge of the shell. Then getting it to stay there while I soldered it in place - without unsoldering any of the exhaust pipes - was an exercise in patience. The next step was to make the intake vent screens on the aft side of the smoke stack. The blueprints call for a rectangular pattern screen with wires spaced 1/2 inch (12 mm) apart. That comes out to 0.0104 inch/0.26 mm square openings with 0.0013 inch/0.033 mm wire. I have three rolls of fine mesh wire screen, one brass with 0.025 inch/0.625 mm squares, another brass with 0.017 inch/0.43 mm squares, and a stainless steel mesh with 0.016 inch/0.42 mm squares. The wire diameters are about 0.004 inch/0.17 mm. These were all oversized and looked too "lumpy" to my eye. Here I departed from true scale. If I was going to have an oversized screen I might as well use a fine photoetch brass screen used for vents in HO scale (1:87) F series diesel engines. I picked up a package of these at our local hobby shop many years ago, thinking they would make nice vent screens for ship models. It has a "X" parallelogram pattern instead of square, with openings 0.030 inch/0.77 mm wide. OK. It isn't to scale, so sue me! I think it looks a lot better than the screen wire. I soldered up four of these 0.51 x 0.26 inch (13.2 x 6.6 mm) vent screens and then glued them inside the vent openings with cyanoacrylate (CA) gel. Next will be the diesel exhaust cap hinges, boiler vent cover, and the cap that fits onto the top edge of the shell. HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL!

Any updates for Pelican?

Thanks for posting that fisherman's staysail rigging information. Because it says the sheet leads down to the aftermost deadeye doesn't necessarily mean it is rigged to the deadeye the way shrouds are rigged. I have seen several instances of where a line is just tied off to a deadeye, sometimes below the lower deadeye. The rigging for the tack is interesting. I would like to see a diagram or photo showing how this was set up. Happy Holidays!

According to Darcy Lever's The Young Sea Officers Sheet Anchor the tackle you are referring to is called the burton tackle (page 23), especially if it descends from the upper mast top. Sometimes it is just called a mast tackle, especially on the lower masthead. The line from the top is called the tackle pendant. These tackles were used for handling cargo, boats, cannons and other heavy objects. For what it is worth, the heaviest and strongest winch used for handling cargo on US Navy ships is still called the burtoning winch. A swifter is the after shroud if there is an odd number of shrouds. It is fitted over the masthead with an eye splice and the shrouds run down on both sides of the mast to deadeyes like the other shrouds.

John, Thanks! Brian, The large center pipe is the vent for the heating boiler. The other ten pipes are exhausts for the four main 6-71 diesel engines, the four 6-71 diesel minesweeping generator engines, and two 4-71 diesel ships service generator engines. The diesels each had a muffler in the overheads of the engine rooms with a rats nest of insulated exhaust pipes leading up into the uptake on the main deck level (also the access down into the engine rooms) and then up into the stack.

Smoke Stack/Funnel The next "detail" to add to the deck houses is the smoke stack. It is a fairly complicated truncated oval cone. I suppose I could have carved it out of a block of wood, but I wanted to try making it from brass sheet. All this brass work is practice for the machinery on the stern of the ship. First I made a CAD model of the smoke stack. The funnel cap piece was a bit tricky in CAD, but there is no way I could have made it free hand! Then I unfolded the 3D CAD parts to make 2D patterns for the pieces. I made the base for the smoke stack from 1/16 inch (1.6 mm) basswood sheet. It was sanded to the correct thickness (about 0.055 inch/1.4 mm) at the edges, and to fit the curvature of the deck. It was glued in place with Titebond Original glue, and this is where Murphy stepped in to help. While I was working on the other pieces the wood curled up at the edges to a shallow "U" shape. I didn't notice this until the glue had set, so I soaked the glue under the edges with water until it loosened. The wet glue was removed, more fresh glue added, and the thing was weighted down with a small anvil resting on a plywood scrap to force the edges to lie flat. I cut out the oval ring at the base of the stack from 0.005 inch (0.13 mm) brass sheet. Then the oval top plate that holds all the exhaust pipes was made and drilled for the pipes. A paper template for the shell of the stack was rolled up and taped closed to form the oval cone. The paper cone was fit into the base ring and the top plate was slipped into the top of the stack. This assembly fit nicely in place at the rear of the main deckhouse on the O1 level. The paper template seemed to be the correct shape so it was time to cut out the remaining brass pieces. These parts were cut from 0.005 inch (0.13 mm) brass sheet. It is pretty thin, but I think this will be sturdy enough after it is rolled up and the base ring and top plate are soldered in place. I will install the 11 exhaust pipes into the top plate before starting the assembly. They should all have tiny cover pieces, but I doubt that I can make the minute hinge parts shown in the CAD image. That top cap piece will be a bit of a challenge to solder directly onto the top edge of the shell piece. Then a 0.025 inch (0.6 mm) diameter brass wire is to be soldered along the top edge of the cap piece! It will be good soldering practice. I have already done all this once before with the funnels for the USS Oklahoma City CLG-5 model - but at 1:96 scale.

Here is a drawing from the Anatomy of Ships book on the Beagle. This shows nibbing and not hooking. You can see the planks near the bow were not nibbed because the met the margin board at less than a 45 degree angle. The nibbed planks seem to be cut into the margin board about half a plank width. It is difficult to see a consistent angle for the nib cut, but it doesn't seem to be cut in perpendicular to the margin board edge. Most appear to b cut perpendicular to the plank edge. This came from usedtosail's Beagle build: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/37665-hms-beagle-by-usedtosail-occre-160/?do=findComment&comment=1083788

The purpose of trimming the ends of planks is to avoid sharp points that might foul lines or break off and leave a gap in the planking. Basically, if the point on the end of a plank will be sharper (less) than 45 degrees the plank should be trimmed. Planks that fit up to the margin boards with greater than a 45 degree angle do not have to be trimmed. At least that is the way is was done in the 20th century on US Navy ships. But I have seen some models where an attempt was made to nib every plank, even where the angles were much greater than 45 degrees. Check to see what Royal Navy practice was in the 1800s. For "nibbing" planks into the margin board the important thing to remember is that the cut into the margin board for a new plank starts where the outboard edge of the last laid plank meets the margin board. Then you cut into the margin board 1/3 to 1/2 a plank width. From there the cut angles back to where the outboard edge of the new plank meets the edge of the margin board. The length of the outboard edge of the nib is different for every plank. The length of that first nibbing cut seems to vary from vessel to vessel (model to model). Some people cut 1/3 of a plank width, some cut 1/2 the plank width. But the cut depth should be the same on all nibs on a vessel. The modern Navy ships I served on had 1/2 plank width nibs, but it seems older sailing vessels may have had 1/3 plank width nibs - at least some modelers do it this way. See if you can find a reference for the Beagle. The angle of the nib cut also varies. Some modelers make the cut perpendicular to the edge of the plank - this would be the same for all planks. Others seem to make the cut perpendicular to the edge of the margin board, but this means the angle of the cut on the end of the plank would be different for each plank. I know of no reference for this practice, but it may have been used on some vessels. Again, see if you can find a reference for the Beagle. This is a link to how I nibbed the planks on my topsail schooner build: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/19611-albatros-by-dr-pr-finished-mantua-scale-148-revenue-cutter-kitbash-about-1815/?do=findComment&comment=605072 I used black construction paper for the grout between planks. Some people use pencil and some don't model the grout. Just about everyone seems to have their own opinions about grout and whether to model it. ***** Older sailing vessels (pre 1800) seem to have used "hooking" instead of nibbing. In this case an extra wide plank was used where the plank run encountered the margin board. Each new plank was cut into the inboard extra wide plank by about half a plank width, and not into the margin board. The wide plank was trimmed back to the width of a normal plank from the "hook" that was formed on the end that met the margin board. The hook planks were shaped to fit the curvature of the margin board, and there were no cuts into the margin board. To do this properly you need a supply of extra wide planks for the ends of the plank runs, and ordinary width planks. For me this is trickier than simple nibbing. There are example of hooking on the forum, but I don't have a good link. Maybe someone else can provide a link.

Nice work! Doing good work in a situation where everything fits together orthogonally is relatively easy. Fitting things together where all the angles are different and curved surfaces are involved requires skill and a LOT of patience! Card templates help reduce the amount of waste of good materials. Enjoy your holidays with the grandkids.

I put dilute white glue on the ratlines after it has been tied, and hang a wire hook with a light weight attached (small clamp) to make the catenary droop. Leave the weights on until the glue dries and then move on to another catenary. The white (school) glue dries without a stain. But if you are going to paint the ratlines you can use any glue.

Paul, Very nice. Now have a merry holiday season!