Dr PR

Thanks Steve.

I rigged the port anchor buoy about the same as the starboard buoy, mainly because I couldn't think of a more reasonable way to deal with the buoy while the anchor was being fished. In this scenario after the anchor was hauled up horizontal the buoy was pulled in, tied to the forward shroud, and the rope coiled and tied in place to get it out of the way. Now I just need to add the flag.

wefalck, I have seen the triangular course as well. And there is a triangular topsail (rafee topsail). The sail in the photo is flown on the windward side where it would have some effect. Because the fore staysail is also raised a full course would probably chafe against the staysail. So from a functional standpoint this makes sense. Or maybe they were just drying laundry? **** When I started this thread I naively thought there was a "way" to rig a schooner. But after finding 10 different ways to rig just the main gaff topsail I realized that if a way to rig a sail is possible someone has probably tried it!

Just when you think you have seen it all, something new pops up. Look at the sail marked with the red arrow on this nice photo (by Tyler Fields) of the modern replica of the Lynx. What do you call this sail? It might be a studding sail, bit it isn't attached to the studding sail yard. It is attached to the course yard (spreader). Is it a "half course" as opposed to a "full course?" It might be a triangular sail.

Allen, I have a collection of rulers gathered over the ages, and it is surprising that some of them differ greatly from the rest - even the triangular "engineering" and "architecture" scales. Some are off as much a 1/8 of an inch in 12 inches (1 part in 96 or 1.042%). Good enough for grade school or making dresses, but not OK for precise measurements. I have a steel ruler marked in 100ths of an inch and it agrees exactly with a CAD created scale printed at 1:1 (viewed with a magnifying loupe). This is my "standard" ruler. When I need to measure around a curve (like the edge of a bulkhead) I cut paper strips, mark them carefully, and measure with the ruler.

Good choice. From what I have read many American ships followed the British color scheme of black from the water line up to the band along the gun ports. This was a yellow color. They repeated the black/yellow/black pattern for each gun deck. The mast tops were painted black - probably because they had that paint on hand. This changed to black and white sometime before 1830 on some ships, and on nearly all by the 1840s. When they switched to white bands along the gun ports they started painting the mast tops white. I have never seen a comprehensive discussion of ship colors in the 1700s and up until the mid 1800s. Chapelle did write a paragraph about schooner colors in The Baltimore Clipper on page 170. Blue is one of the colors he mentions for hulls, and dark (Navy) blue would be appropriate.

Thanks to everyone for all the tips and information. I am familiar with Bob Smith Industries. In my company's work making oceanographic instruments and some other industrial controls we special ordered custom glues specific for unusual environments (8000 psi deep ocean pressures or high temperatures). I haven't seen BSI products on the shelves around here, but I'll look again. Maybe I will try Gorilla CA - I have seen Gorilla products in stores here. **** To answer Gary's question "Is Corvallis, Oregon, particularly humid?" This is western Oregon, 36 miles from the Pacific Ocean! If the ground gets dry folks call it a drought! Some years it rains from November to May almost non stop. However, it isn't "rain" like you get in the southwest. It mostly drizzles, and what Oregonians call rain we called "sprinkles" when I grew up in Arkansas. We get only about 40 inches per year here in town, but up to 120 inches on nearby Coast Range mountains. The saving grace is that it doesn't rain much in summer and fall, and it rarely gets hot. So it never gets hot and muggy.

I learned long ago to rig the ropes with barely enough force to pull them straight, without bending anything. This will eliminate almost all slack lines. You can permanently fix ropes in the straight shape by painting the rope with shellac or white glue (shellac for polyester and white glue for cotton and silk). This is also good for "training" lines to have a smooth curve or sag where appropriate. However, I do have this problem on my current build with lines to the fore course (spreader) yard because there are several lines lifting the yard and none pulling down. The yard rides up and the lifts and buntlines go slack. If I had rigged the course the lines to that sail would have pulled the yard down. I can probably solve this problem by weighting down the yard to stretch the lines tight and then fasten (glue) the trusses to the mast. Another option is to drill a small hole through the yard and into the mast, and push a wire or pin through to hold the yard in position.

Here is a bit more progress. I have added foot ropes to the bowsprit. Apparently these ropes were called "horses" up through the end of the 1700s (in English). Then they were called "man ropes." Today to be politically correct perhaps we should call them "people ropes." Horses, manropes, people ropes - they are all silly. Obviously they are foot ropes (or footropes)! When I started investigating how these ropes were attached I found varying opinions - probably all correct for particular ships at a certain places and times. Lee's Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War says the ropes were attached to eye bolts on the sides of the bowsprit cap. But he talks about large square rigged ships of the line and doesn't belittle himself to talk about the other less important ships like schooners. But I have seen foot ropes on schooner models rigged this way. Lever's The Young Sea Officers Sheet Anchor, Marquardt's Global Schooner and Mondfeld's Historic Ship Models all say the rope was looped around the jib boom behind the bowsprit cap and lead forward to the end of the boom. This is how I have rigged it on this schooner model. The forward ends of the lines could be attached to the end of the jib boom with a cut splice or two eyes. I used two eyes. The books say that often knots were placed at intervals to give the sailors better footing. Again there are different opinions. Depending upon which author you read the knots were this type, that type or some other type. But most say overhand knots were sometimes used, and this is good enough for the model. However, bosun's mates like to tie fancy knots. Left to themselves they often tie elaborate knots to escape the boredom of life at sea, or to look busy when the bosun is looking for someone to do real work. Now I just need to train the foot ropes to hang in a smooth catenary. **** I think there are only two things left to do on the model. I am working to finish rigging the port anchor buoy. I will probably rig it like the starboard one, although it might not have been tied in the storage position until after the anchor was secured to the rail. The flag is a problem. I have a good image of the fifteen star and fifteen stripe flag used from 1795 to 1818 (the "Star Spangled Banner"). So far I have printed it only on 24 pound printer paper, and that is pretty heavy. I need to try to print it on thinner paper if I can find some suitable for my printer. I have lost my "to do" list so I think that should finish the model. But I still need to build a suitable display stand.

Many on the Forum seem to prefer super glue to other cements. I dislike it! I guess I am jinxed when it comes to super glue. I have purchased maybe six tubes in my lifetime. Of the first three one hardened in the tube before I ever got to use it. I used only a few drops from the other two before they became solid. The only good luck I have had with it was recently. I bought a tube of Loctite gel in a fancy applicator "bottle." This was just a plastic shell with things on the sides that squeezed an ordinary tube of glue inside. I used it between one and two dozen times before the cap became glued to the tip. While trying to get the cap off the tube began turning in the plastic shell. This twisted the tube about half way along its length, trapping about half of the remaining glue in the bottom. I eventually disassembled the thing and found the top half hardened. I poked a hole in the bottom half of the tube to get a couple more drops. Then the rest hardened. Then I bought these two tubes a couple of days ago. The instructions said to screw the end/cap pair onto the tube to puncture the thin metal diaphragm on the top of the tube. Try as I may it didn't work with the tube on the left. So I tried to puncture the diaphragm with a sharp metal point - it wouldn't puncture! The entire brand new tube was rock hard! The second tube was still pliable so the glue inside was still liquid. I tried to open the second tube and the cap would not screw on straight and puncture the diaphragm. I punctured the diaphragm with a metal point and used the end/cap from the first tube. So far I have gotten three small drops of glue from this second tube. So out of six tubes of superglue I have purchased only one gave me at least half a tube of glue before it hardened. Two were hardened before I opened them. Two more solidified shortly after I opened them. Considering the relatively high cost of this stuff, it has cost me two to three dollars per drop. That is extremely expensive! Apparently other people have had better luck and have actually been able to use super glue regularly. Does anyone ever get to use an entire tube before it hardens? What's the secret? **** Of course there is the other problem with super glue - the fumes are very irritating! Many glues have odors, but super glue is the worst! **** I have several other types of glues and these last for years after opening. I have even emptied some of the containers while the glue was still good!

Dan, What material are you using for rope and seizing? Every material I have used (cotton, silk, polyester) is a bit springy, and knots will try to come undone. However, silk becomes totally limp when wetted with white glue, and this prevents unwinding while the glue dries. Cotton is not quite as good, but it does lose most of its springiness when wet. Polyester rope is very springy, and knots will come untied if they aren't fixed with some type of glue. Unfortunately, the only glue I have found that will stick to polyester is CA (cyanoacrylate, super glue), and I am not sure just how good that bond is. White glue will not stick to polyester! I glue the larger rope strands together with a small drop of CA and then wrap the seizing, with a bit of white glue after the seizing is done to hold it. I normally dilute the white glue 1:1 with water, but I have also used about 70% glue and 30% water.

What? I thought everyone knew what baggywrinkles are!

One of the details I wanted to add to the model was the "baggywrinkles" (baggywinkles, chafing mats) on the main boom lifts. I posted how I made these from pipe cleaners in this link: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/38184-chafing-mats-or-service-on-lines/?do=findComment&comment=1100130 Here are some photos of the finished part in place on the main boom topping lift. I had to unhook the standing part of the lift runner tackle from an eye bolt on deck to give the lift enough slack to wrap into the pipe cleaner coil. Then the tackle was hooked back to the eye bolt to pull the lift taut. The eye bolt is close to the bulwark so I had to use a small dentist's mirror to look down between the deck house and the bulwark to see the hook and eye. As I slowly withdrew the mirror the end of the handle caught on something (fore gaff vangs?). There was a slight tug and then "pop." Another plastic hook broke - on the fore gaff peak halliard upper block. You can see the block hanging down over the gaff at the upper left of the last photo. One step forward, one step back!

Baggywrinkles revisited. I looked at "fuzzy threads" for knitting at a local store, and they have very little bulk. I think if they were wrapped around a rope they wouldn't make much of a bundle. Then I got the idea to use one of my standard tools/building materials - pipe cleaners! I don't smoke, but I have had this package of pipe cleaners in my modeling kit for decades. They are handy for cleaning out small orifices and such. First I clamped a small drill bit into a vise. Then I wound the pipe cleaner around it tightly, leaving short "handles" at each end. Here you can see I was also experimenting with coloring the mat. The pipe cleaner material is cotton, and cotton absorbs water. I dabbed on some acrylic paint to give it the color of "used rags." The paint soaked up nicely. I am adding these after the boom lifts were already rigged. The trick here is to pull the spirals of the mat open. This allows the rope to be wrapped into the gap between spirals. But that means the rope must hang loose while you are wrapping it into the mat. The standing part of the boom lift running tackle is hooked to a ring bolt on deck. The lift wasn't installed tightly so the hook came loose easily. This allowed the lift line to be wrapped around the mat. After it was in place I cut off the "handles" and touched up the paint. Here is a photo (left below) of the baggywrinkle on the model's boom lift. The photo on the right is a mat on the replica schooner Lynx.

Here is a drawing from Ordnance Instructions for the Unites States Navy (1860). It shows the method of pointing a gun at an angle to the centerline of the ship. For the big lumbering square rigged ships of the line what wefalck said is probably true. But there are accounts of smaller, more maneuverable vessels like schooners pulling up off the quarter and out of the firing field of larger ships and blasting away at them. In this case angling the guns toward the target would be useful. Pivot guns apparently were often used this way. In any case the Navy seems to have thought it would be useful to train gun crews to point their guns at different angles.

Some wooden hull vessels had a thin layer of oak sheathing applied over the normal hull planks. The sheathing consisted of planks attached to the hull to protect the hull in places where it could be damaged by objects being lowered/raised over the side. This sheathing was replaced when it was damaged. In two cases I know of the planks were not tapered. In one case the entire underwater hull was covered with thin sheathing, and the planks were not tapered. Does anyone have any information about how these planks were applied? What pattern? How do you plank a hull without tapering the planks?

Gary, About the epoxy and the Navy. I don't know how far back that goes. But we did use epoxy paint in the missile house and warhead magazines because we couldn't paint in those spaces while ammunition was loaded. So it was a big project to offload everything at a Weapons Depot and repaint the magazines. However, the grey paint that was used topsides seemed to me to be water soluble and had to be repainted continuously. When I asked our Weapons Officer why epoxy paint wasn't used topsides he replied that there wouldn't anything for the crew to do to keep them busy. "Idle hands are the tools of the devil ..." So they chipped paint. I don't like how this planking is turning out. I have finished the sheathing down to the bilge keel. The planks from the bow are at a sharp angle to the planks from the stern. I have no way to know how they should come together. It looks like a mess to me!

Derek, I do not have a shear right now. I used to use the one in our shop at work - but it was a 48 inch wide cutter for large sheet metal work. I like the looks of the 8 inch machine grsjax posted the link to. I think MicroMark used to sell one similar to this. Sorry to say Trump's Hobbies has closed. Jim was at retirement age and Internet competition was really hurting the business. He tried to sell the business but had no serious offers.

Here are a couple of photos to show the "lay" of the sheathing. On the real ship this sheathing was made of 3/4 inch thick red oak planks. The blueprints say nothing about how to place the planks around the bilge keels - but they do say to cover the bilge keels with the sheathing. Tricky! But you can see how I am trimming the planks to fit up to the bilge keel. The blueprints say to trim the sheathing around hull openings, rudder plates, seachests and the stern frame. I will have to relocate the sacrificial anode adjacent to the starboard sea chest. Here you can see how the sheathing planks meet the garboard strakes at an angle, rather than being spiled to run along beside the garboard. The blueprints say to cover the garboard strake and the keel with sheathing, but to not cover the worm shoe (it is also made of red oak). The thin red line shows where the brass stem band will fit over the sheathing. The sheathing planks will be tapered gradually to zero thickness where they meet the stem so the stem band will fit smoothly over them. It's "deja vu all over again."

Gary, Thank you very much! This is not only interesting information about fishing boats, it does help me understand the origins of this practice. Interestingly, the Cape's planking was 3/4 inch red oak, even though the ship was built in Washington State where Douglas fir was abundant and cheap. You mentioned trim to protect the end grain. A vertical angled strake behind the bow sheathing is shown on the MSI blueprints, and in the photos of the bow of the current Cape. The blueprints don't say anything about how the sheathing was applied between the bow and stern! My photos of the ship in the 1960s don't show this end grain protection for the sheathing farther back along the sides. But the pictures are pretty grainy and hard to interpret. Do you think it should have vertical pieces to protect the end grain? Not tapering or spiling the planks really goes against the grain (pun intended) of everything I have learned about wooden hull construction. I am now carefully cutting the planks to sharp points where they fit around the bilge keels. And soon they will be tapering to fit the garboard strakes. And somehow the planks will have to flow off the after curved hull surfaces onto the flat deadwood and stern frame around the prop and rudder. The blueprints show them running parallel to the bottom of the keel on the deadwood at the stern. I don't know how this will turn out! **** I have been following and admiring your Pelican build. You are doing a beautiful job.

Derek, It looks to me as if the shear you posted the link to is just a crude cutter. A good metal brake (shear and bender) has a "table" on one side that you rest the piece to be cut on, and adjustable stops on the other side to control the width of the piece being cut. You place the work piece on the table with the knife blade up, push the piece through beneath the blade until it contacts the stops, and then cut. This allows you to cut many strips of exactly the same width. A good shear will also have multiple "clamps" that lower with the blade, contacting the work piece and clamping it to the table just before the blade cuts the metal. This prevents the cutting forces from twisting the metal during the cut. The device you posted a link to doesn't have a wide enough table, no stops, and only the one clamp that will not prevent the piece from moving during cutting. It is better than scissors only in that it can cut thicker metal. But it is just for chopping the ends off of longer strips. **** A break will also have bending feature. This is usually a lower fixed "V" groove, with an upper moving "V" shaped piece. It doesn't cut the metal, but just bends it 90 degrees. You can also get tool pieces to bend different angles and different shapes These tools usually have sets of the upper "V" pieces of different widths so you can make bends of varying lengths between other features in the work piece. Like the shear, the bender will have a table to feed the metal into the bender, and will also have adjustable stops so you can feed the piece in the correct distance before bending. This allows you to make repeated bends of pieces with the same dimensions. **** Here is an example of a tool with these features. It also has a sheet metal roller for creating controlled radius curves in sheet metal. https://micromark.com/products/3-in-1-metal-worker?keyword=metal shear If the price is a bit too steep, or it is too large for your work space, you should also look into photo etch bending tools. These are good for thin metals. They are not as sophisticated as a real shear and break and do not have a shear. For brass thinner than 0.015 inch (0.4 mm) you can make cuts with a knife. Just clamp the metal to be cut with a steel ruler placed along the line to be cut. Then draw the knife blade (a dull blade will work) along the ruler edge repeatedly until it cuts through the metal.

Per, thanks. Shooter, When I was in training for the Talos system everyone was talking about missiles that could be stored like "telephone poles" - just put them in the magazine and forget them until you were ready to fire. They should be more reliable, and there was much less danger from handling them all the time. Talos missiles had to have the NiCad batteries recharged and replaced every month, and the entire electronic and hydraulic system tested every other month. That kept the missile crew busy round the clock babysitting 44 missiles. And that increased the danger of mishandling. We had 13,200 pounds (6.6 tons, 5,987 kg) of class A high explosives and 176,000 pounds (88 tons, 79,833 kg) of class B explosives in the missile house. Plus the capability of carrying nuclear warheads. It just wasn't a good place for handling accidents! I am not familiar with how much servicing the newer Aegis system missiles need, but just storing them in the vertical launchers without having to move them around all the time makes the system much more reliable and safe!

I have been working on the hull sheathing while finishing the topsail schooner build. The rounded edges on the planks created by the draw plate do a good job making the gap between planks. The biggest problem so far has been glue (Sig-Bond Cement) squeezing up between the planks. If it hardens it hides the gaps, so I must wipe off as much as possible immediately after placing the plank. Then I drag a sharpened wooden toothpick point along the groove to gouge out any remaining glue. This also tends to spread the planks a bit, enhancing the gap. The planks are so thin (0.015 inch or 0.4 mm) that they conform to the curves of the hull without any special bending, and are held in place by the wet glue. Nevertheless, I use blue painter's masking tape to hold down the planks until the glue sets. The planks at the stem will be covered by the brass stem band. First I will carve them to zero thickness at the "rabbet" where the hull planks meet the stem so the stem band will conform to the shape of the planking. After the glue sets, if any of the planking gaps are obscured, I pull an old #11 knife blade with a broken tip along the gap, dull side first, to scrape out any dried glue. I can see painting the hull will be interesting because I don't want the paint to obscure the gaps!

The port ratlines are finished!!!!!!!!! The model is almost finished! There are only three things left to do (that I can remember now). First I need to figure out how the port anchor buoy should be handled while the anchor is being fished. Was it pulled out of the water first before the anchor was fished, or left in the water while the anchor was fished? While the crew is fishing the anchor, if the buoy is brought aboard, what did they do with it while handling the anchor? Second, I need to add horses (foot ropes or man ropes) under the jib boom. Third, there is the chafing mats or serving on the main boom topping lift. I need to check my to-do list to see if there is anything else I have forgotten.

Thukydides, Good point about the thimble(s) being strapped to the neck of the pommelion or cascabel. Why two thimbles? The thimbles or iron breeching ring would solve a problem the cut splice created - the breeching rope would be free to pass through the thimble/ring as the gun is aimed at an angle. This would allow the gun to recoil more in a straight line until the breeching rope pulled tight to stop it. The recoil force would be born equally by both ring bolts in the ship's side. When a gun was fired at an angle with the cut splice the breeching rope would be pulled tighter on the side to which the gun was aimed. Therefore, in the recoil that side would pull tight first and jerk the gun around until the other side pulled tight. Most of the recoil force would fall upon one of the ring bolts. I'm sure gun crews understood that they shouldn't be standing behind one of these things when it fired. But having the gun flailing around a bit more would be "inconvenient." I like your idea that the thimble(s) spliced to the neck of the cascabel would be an evolutionary step toward casting the breeching ring in the cannon itself.