Dr PR

I am continuing work on the anchor handling rig. The kit plans called for just gluing the two pieces of the catheads together at the angle. That didn't sound very sturdy to me so I decided to use a bridal joint with a mortise cut on the horizontal piece and a tenon on the vertical part. I made a 1/16 inch dowel of the same wood to pin the two pieces together. The result is a very strong joint! I also used a similar dowel to pin the two sheaves into the slots in the cathead. The left image shows the "eyes" of the ship. The catheads have been mounted on the rails and bolsters fitted around the hawse for the anchor cable. The boat davits have also been mounted on the stern. The next picture shows the anchor cable routing. The cable was normally stowed in the cable tiers below the midships hatch. The anchor was stowed on the rail just aft of the catheads, suspended from the cathead and railing without the anchor cable attached. When the anchor was needed the cable was brought up, lead through the hawse and attached to the anchor. A short fishing boom was attached to a sturdy deck fixture and used to lower the anchor so it hung from the cathead. The cathead tackle was detached to drop the anchor, with the cable feeding out of the cable tiers, or perhaps the cable was first faked down on deck to ensure clean running. The anchor was raised using block and tackle attached to the fore mast or on the lower spar on the mast. A messenger line attached to the running block was lashed to the cable and the messenger hauled in. When necessary the anchor cable could be secured to the bits while the messenger was repositioned on the cable. When raised to the side the cathead tackle was attached and the anchor was hauled up. The fishing boom was used to haul the anchor flukes up to the rail. Then the anchor cable was detached and stowed below. EDIT: For details of anchor handling on small ships that did not have a capstan or windlass see this link: A heavy wooden piece was attached inside the bulwark to make the inboard part of the bolster. A book on wooden ship building said the hawse opening should be 2 1/2 times the diameter of the anchor cable. The hawse opening was shaped to minimize the curvature of the cable as it passed through, with a radius two to three times the diameter of the cable. The outboard part of the bolster has rounded edges to the hawse opening. The opening curves around from the inboard side and down to lead the cable out with a gentle bend. Some ships had metal inserts in the hawse opening to reduce wear on the bolster. This configuration is a blend of several drawings of period ships and photos of real ships.

Gregory, That's an interesting idea. Do you first close it down to the desired diameter - by chucking the proper size drill bit? The jaws do not have cutting edges, but I can see how they might "worry" wood into the desired cylindrical shape. **** I am doing everything with hand tools, and some things are quite a challenge. I am retired now, but when I was working I had access to a full machine shop. I really miss all those great tools! I can see that before I take on a really big project, like the 1: 96 USS Oklahoma City CLG-5, I will need a lathe and milling machine, and a place to put them!

Gregory, This was my first attempt to "mass produce" parts, so it probably isn't the most efficient method - but it worked. 1. I designed the gun carriages in a CAD program I have been using since 1988 - DesignCAD 3D MAX. I had to fiddle with the dimensions for reasons explained in an earlier post. Then I printed a dimensioned drawing to work from. **** 2. For the carriage cheeks (sides) I cut rectangular "blanks" of boxwood sized to the largest dimensions of the parts. I made several extra pieces in case I screwed up some of them. 3. I placed all of the pieces together side by side in a small vise and trued up the ends with a file so they were exactly the same length. 4. Then I glued strips of wood across the ends. This made one single "cheek assembly" to work on. 5. I have a very old and pathetic Dremel drill press, but I have learned to make it work for most jobs (a milling machine would have been MUCH nicer!). I set up a guide that I could slide the cheek assembly along. An end mill bit was chucked in the Dremel and it was carefully positioned for each cut. I adjusted the height and bit position by cutting into scrap wood until the cut was correct (very tedious and time consuming - Oh, for a milling machine!). Then I slid the cheek assembly along to make the same cut in all the pieces. 6. This setup adjustment was repeated for each successive cut. 7. The grooves for the cannon trunnions were carved with a small round file, and the large concave cut on the bottom was cut with a larger file. I suppose I could have done these cuts with the Dremel using ball end mills, but I didn't have the right sizes. 8. After all the cuts were made I used the end mill in the Dremel to carve away the strips that were glued along the ends of the parts to free up the individual cheeks. 9. I put a small (0.020") drill bit in the Dremel and set up stops to position individual cheeks. This allowed me to drill the holes for the wire loops in the same place in each part. I didn't show the loops for the gun tackle in the pictures, but they will be there. **** 10. The carriage axles were done in a similar manner. Front and rear axles were the same size. I needed rectangular cross section beams to tie the carriage cheeks together, with axles for the wheels protruding from the ends. The wood was 1/16" thick boxwood cut into equal length strips about 3/16" longer than the axle beams should be. After gluing a strip along the ends of the bunched pieces to hold them all together (as above) I used the end mill in the Dremel to carve notches in each end top and bottom leaving the proper length beam with a 1/16" square bit of wood protruding from the ends for the axles for the wheels. 11. Then the strips glued across the ends were removed as described above. 12. I needed a way to turn the square axles into cylinders. I made a cutting tool from a 1/16" inside diameter short brass tube. I cut notches in one end of the tube on opposite sides of the tube diameter. These were angled to create cutting teeth. 13. This tool was pressed over the ends of the square axles and rotated to cut away the corners and leave round axles. It worked! I have also used this tool to make 1/16" diameter dowels to serve as pins for the sheaves in the catheads and boat davits. 14. The holes through the axles for the axle pins were drilled with a 0.020" diameter drill bit in a pin vise. **** 15. The other parts were fairly simple and were just cut from wood strips using a small saw and miter box and shaped with a file if necessary. I hope you could follow all of this. If something isn't clear just ask and I will try to explain it better.

Carl, Thanks. I used the triangular file because it centered nicely in the groove between the two soldered washers. The soldered pair is about 0.040" wide (1 mm) and the smallest round file I have is about 0.032" wide (0.81 mm) at the extreme tip - and that is a small file only 3 inches (76 mm) long! Only a short portion near the tip is small enough diameter to work making the groove. I don't know if it would have centered as well as the triangular file. I suppose I could use the triangular file to start the groove and switch to the round file to finish it. Once the rigging is in place you won't be able to see the sheaves anyway.

I have been working on the larger deck details. I want to get all of these fittings ready for when it warms up enough to go outside and paint. The knightheads and bitts were fairly simple, after I decided how to build them. The parts supplied with the kit seemed pretty grotesque and oversized. I took the dimensions from drawings of schooners and revenue cutters of about 80 tons. The pumps were an interesting small project. I used eight pieces of HO scale railroad ties for the wooden barrel and cut the metal pieces from thin brass. I will paint the metalwork black. I built up the support under the circular pivot gun rail and shaped it to fit the camber of the deck. A couple of scuppers were cut into the support to allow the rail circle to drain. The photo on the right shows one possible configuration for the 6 pounder gun battery. The guns are spaced every third opening between frames. I have also experimented with spacing at every fourth opening. In either case the number of ports will be more than the number of guns. I plan to place dummy gun ports along the hull outboard of the deck house. There will be two stern gun ports. I will paint the bottom of the hull white. Between the waterline and the wale will be black, and the rail will be black. The stripe on the bulwark between the wale and rail will be white, with black gun port covers. The dummy gun ports will also be black. The inside of the bulwark will be brown or yellow. Most of the deck fittings will be white. I have started working on the catheads for the bow and boat davits for the stern. Again, the parts in the kit are pretty crude. They have only one sheave and an open slot in the end that the sheave fit into. Every drawing I have seen shows two sheaves. I made the sheaves by soldering together two 1-72 brass washers. I chucked them in a drill and used a small triangular file to carve the groove.

Richard, I have been researching anchors on Baltimore schooners and revenue cutters. I am pretty sure they carried anchors. They were lashed to the ship's side, usually near the bow and cat heads. The anchor cable (rope) was removed and stowed below decks. When they needed to drop the anchor the cable was brought up and attached, presumably with the free end attached to something for the drop. I am also pretty sure most of the smaller ships (about 100 tons or less) did not have winches or capstans. I have found several references to raising the anchor using block and tackle rigged to the fore mast or the lower spar on the mast. Line from the lower block was attached to the anchor cable and then the cable was hauled in section by section. For ships with a capstan a continuous messenger loop was run around the capstan and lead forward where it was fastened to the anchor cable. The messenger was then pulled in with the capstan and the loop returned to the fo'c'sle. As the cable came in the messenger loop was spliced to it again and again as the loop was pulled around the capstan. In this manner they managed a fairly continuous pull on the cable. When the anchor broke the surface the block and tackle rigged to the cathead was used to hoist the anchor to the cathead. Then the anchor cable was unattached and stowed. A portable boom was rigged to the base of the fore mast or some other sturdy foundation. Another block and tackle was rigged to the end of the boom. When the anchor reached the cathead I think they first used the boom to raise the anchor flukes to the rail or deck, and then a line was wrapped around the anchor stock or flukes to secure the fluke end to the deck/rail. Then the tackle from the boom was attached to the top of the anchor and used to release the anchor from the cathead, or at least to take the strain off the cathead tackle. After this the top end of the anchor was lashed in place. Apparently the cathead was not used to support the anchor in it's stowed position, at least on some ships. When they wanted to drop anchor the tackle from the cathead was attached to the anchor. I guess they used the anchor boom again to release the anchor/flukes from the rail and lower it beneath the cathead. The anchor cable was then attached. My guess is that this method was used because it was cheaper than providing a winch or capstan, and it did not take up deck space when the anchor wasn't being handled. Also, the smaller ships carried smaller anchors that could be hoisted with ordinary tackle. Lots of guesses there, but it is based upon some early shiphandling texts that I found, especially the midshipmen's guides to ship handling from the 19th century. **** Two boats?! I know that some ships carried a boat slung over the stern on davits. The Mantua Albatross kit has these davits and a horrible example of a boat pressed out of sawdust or something, that is badly warped. I get to build a new boat from scratch. I guess two boats could be nested on the davits. Also, I have seen drawings of boats slung over the side on davits, similar to whaling ship boat stowage. These davits could be portable, so they wouldn't show on ship's plans. I guess if you worked on one of those ships back then you knew how things were done so there was no need to put everything on the plans.

Wow! Valeriy, you have made great progress since I last looked in on this build.

One of the problems I have been thinking about is whether or not ships fitted with a pivot gun also carried carriage mount broadside guns. Chapelle's "The Baltimore Clipper" lists the armament of numerous schooners and privateers. Most carried one long gun and from one to a dozen smaller cannons. The guns in the Mantua kit are a reasonable battery for the Baltimore clipper. He describes (pages 72-74) the armament of the HMS Dominica (200 tons) as having a short 32 pounder pivot gun and fifteen carriage guns - twelve short 12 pounders, two long 6 pounders, and a brass 4 pounder. The Dominica may have been a three masted schooner, but the plans show a two-masted ship. Chapelle comments that it was unusual for a three masted ship to carry a pivot gun. The Decatur was an American two masted schooner armed with a long 18 pounder pivot gun and six 12 pounder carriage guns. The Decatur and Dominica fought a running battle where the Decatur used it's pivot gun with devastating effect. The ships were about the same size and speed but the American gunnery was superior. The Decatur eventually boarded and captured the Dominica. Both of these 200 ton ships were quite a bit larger than the revenue cutter I am building, but the Decatur's battery was similar in number. My 12 pounder pivot gun and six 6 pounder carriage guns seem reasonable for the 80 ton ship.

Are you using a Windows or Apple operating system? There isn't much compatibility between the two. I have used DesignCAD (Windows) since 1988. https://www.turbocad.com/designcad/designcad-3d-max-2018.html DC has a 2D version for about $50. It is the easiest to use CAD program I have seen - and I have used half a dozen over the years. It has a free user forum with many experienced users checking in daily to help new users. I can't strees enough the importance of a good users forum to help you learn how to do things! http://forum.designcadcommunity.com/index.php HOWEVER, any new program will take time to learn. **** You say your kitchen program outputs to "BtoCAD." What file format does the kitchen design program generate? If your program can generate DXF or DWG files just about any CAD program can import them. If it outputs Sketchup format files you could use that program. I looked up BtoCAD and it apparently uses the AutoCAD DWG file format.

Here is another puzzle. I see you have made anchors for your cutter, and it looks like you have pieces for cat heads. But how were the anchors raised, and where was the anchor cable stored? Chapelle's drawings of the Doughty designs show no anchors or cat heads for the 31, 51 or 80 ton cutters - they also had no bulwarks above the main deck. But the 77 ton Morris did have bulwarks with cat heads and apparently anchors and tackles. But no windlass is shown to raise the anchor. The Mantua Albatross kit includes nice anchors and chain, and cat heads. But it has a capstan aft of the main mast, and shows the anchor chains running far back to holes in the main deck midships. Chapelle's drawings of the American privateer Lynx/HMS Musquidobit and HMS Alban show capstans aft of the main mast, and cat heads forward. But they don't show where the anchor cable ran. I'm pretty sure the Mantua kit is modeled after the British schooners. I have read that the revenue cutters were to remain at sea as much as possible and not anchor in port. So maybe they didn't have anchors, but I think I would not be comfortable without having anchors to help ride out storms or to drop hook in port while taking on supplies. You can't always count on finding a berth along side a pier! I have also read that on some of the Baltimore schooners the anchors were raised using tackle rigged to the main spar on the fore mast. One account said the anchors were stowed below decks through a midships hatch. So what do we do with the anchors? I can see that the anchors may have been rigged on the bulwarks and cat heads. Dropping would entail swinging them from the cat head and then releasing them. They could be retrieved with block and tackle rigged from the lowest spar on the fore mast. The cable/chain could have been hoisted lengths at a time until the anchor was raised, and then it could have been stowed again on the railing an cat head. Any thoughts? Phil

Thanks. They should look better after they are sealed and painted. I have quite a collection waiting for painting. I want to use a clear lacquer sealing coat, but it contains acetone, toluene and other smelly solvents that you really shouldn't breathe and should be used outdoors. It has been cold and damp outside (winter in Oregon) so I am waiting for it to warm up a bit before doing the painting. I'll paint the gun carriages brown. I think I will blacken the cannons.

6 POUNDER CANNONS The Mantua kit included six small cannons. At first I thought they were too small to be used on a revenue cutter, but I compared their length to information for various cannons used in the early 1800s and found they were approximately correct for 1:48 scale 6 pounders. 6 pounder guns were used on the revenue cutters, so I decided to make carriages for them and see how they worked on the 1:48 model. This image shows the 12 pounder cannon used on the pivot gun at the top. The 6 pounder cannon is below it. Actually, both guns are a bit "pudgy" or broader in proportion to length for the dimensions of the real cannons of the period. But I decided to use them on this build anyway. The next picture shows a major problem with the cannons supplied with the kit. Both barrels were bored out to ridiculous diameters. The walls were so thin that the cannons would have exploded if they were fired with enough charge to expel the ball from the muzzle! Comparing length to bore diameter the 12 pounder was bored for a 28 pound ball, and the 6 pounder was bored for a 24 pound shot!! I soldered concentric brass tubing into the barrels and then bored the barrels to the proper diameters. The 12 pounder fired 4.5 inch balls, and the 6 pounder fired 3.75 inch balls. The photo shows the original over sized bore and the resulting correct bore dimensions. Another problem with the parts supplied with the kit was the height of the barrels on the 6 pounders when mounted on the supplied carriages and wheels. The barrel height was about the same as the top of the railing on the bulwarks. This meant the guns could only be aimed downward! That's OK if you are using them for fishing, but they would have been useless for any other purpose. The drawing shows the plan for gun carriages that would work on the model. The ship had substantial camber to the deck, so when the ship was on an even keel the deck edge sloped downward. To get the guns to fire with just slight elevation the carriages would have to be significantly lower than the kit parts, and the rear wheels would have to be much smaller diameter than the front wheels (this was common on real gun carriages). Using the dimensions of the deck, bulwark and rail on the model and the kit supplied cannons I worked out the dimensions of the carriages and wheels to allow the guns to be run out with the barrels horizontal (solid red outline) and to be fired with up to 5 degree elevation (dashed blue outline) with the quoin removed. However, if they were fired with elevation the recoil back up the sloping deck would have caused the top of the barrel to strike the railing over the gun port. The red dashed line shows the travel path of the top of the barrel in the horizontal position - it just clears the rail. I constructed new carriages for the 6 pounders. Each carriage had seven wooden parts, four brass wheels, a pin head for the quoin handle and two metal loops for the gun tackle. To put things in scale, the small brass wheels are 0.125 inch diameter. It was a lot of small parts to make. Just imagine doing this for a 100 gun ship of the line! I thought I might make the wheels from wood, but 1/8 inch dowels were not suitable for boring the 1/16 inch diameter holes for the axles. I used concentric brass tubing soldered together, two layers for the small wheels and four layers for the large (3/16 inch diameter) wheels. I chose this route because I do not have a lathe to drill the 1/16 inch holes into brass rods. Here are pictures of the kit supplied carriages (left) and the scratch built carriages (right). As you can see, the scratch built carriages mount the guns lower. In addition, they are much more correct in the details. The axles are even drilled to allow pins to be inserted to secure the wheels. Here is the full 6 pounder battery.

I am slowly adding details to the hull. The top rails were the latest work. I cut the rails from a wide sheet of basswood (lime) as single pieces port and starboard. A third piece was fitted over the stern. I have shortened the tiller and temporarily placed the binnacle from the kit about two scale feet aft of the deck house. I may take another scale foot off the tiller and move the binnacle back a bit to give more clearance to the companionway on the deck house. The doors for the companionway were made from very thin plywood. It is easy to remove parts of the upper layer of the plywood to expose inner layers, and this is what I did to create the inset panels in the doors. Hinges were made of thin brass strips with brass wire soldered across. The companionway was modeled after the companionway on the lumber schooners C. A Thayer and Wawona. A handle was added to the sliding top of the companionway.

Mark, Thanks. The 3D model is about a gigabyte (for comparison, the 3D CAD file for my house is only about 20 megabytes). I have included details down to 3/16 inch (1:1 scale) - primarily fasteners such as screws and rivets. But there were a few places where I omitted some of the tiny details (screw threads and some very small rivets) in order to keep the file sizes smaller. I put in all the details with the hope of someday generating walk around videos. I have started generating 2D files. The forward superstructure file took several days to generate and the resulting file is 345 megabytes. After cleaning it up to remove unwanted lines and duplicate line segments it should be quite a bit smaller. But it is going to take a long time to generate all of the files. Right now I am taking a break from CAD and I am building a 1:48 scale model of a Baltimore clipper revenue cutter. Phil

Thank you very much! Phil

RUDDER I have been making the rudder and tiller. Looks like this was my first really big screw-up. As you can see in the photo, I attached the pintles to the stern post and the gudgeons to the rudder. This is bass-ackwards according to normal boat building practice (I knew that!). But it is the way Phil's boat yard made it. Next time I should spend more time on research before becoming engrossed in the building! CORRECTED IN POST # 121! The gudgeons were made with a 0.017 inch thick copper strip from the Mantua kit. There wasn't enough for the pintles, so I used a strip of 0.015 inch brass. The pintle pins were 12 mm brass nails that came with the kit. I also used some of these to pin the two parts of the rudder together. The "bolts" that attach the pintles and gudgeons were cut from 7 mm brass nails I had in my parts collection. The gudgeon bearings were short pieces of a 1/16 inch diameter brass tube. The pintle pins and gudgeon tubes were soldered into their respective strips. The tiller was carved from a 0.095 inch square mahogany strip. I thought the reddish mahogany would make a nice color for the finished tiller. After fitting it into a hole in the rudder head I carefully tapered it to a scale 3 inch handle and trimmed it to an octagonal cross section. Then I boiled it in water for 15 minutes. This producd a surprise - when I fished the wood out of the water it was black! I bent it around a form I made from scrap wood and clamped the ends. After it sat all night the wood resumed some of it's natural color and the piece retained the curved shape. However, the wood is noticeably grayer than it was before boiling. I don't know if steaming would have retained more of the natural color. These images show some of the construction detail. I cut the narrow strips around the rudder head from 0.003 inch thick brass sheet. The rudder head and tiller design was taken from the brig Lady Washington that sails the west coast out of Aberdeen, Washington. I have visited this ship several times and had the pleasure of taking a short sailing excursion from Newport, Oregon, fulfilling a dream of sailing on a square rigger! I added three pieces of wood above the gudgeons to my original shape. These fill part of the space between the rudder and stern post. White putty was used to fill in the gaps. The picture shows all of the construction details - after it is painted many of these details will be hidden. I cut a hole in the deck planks and inserted a new surround piece for the rudder hole. This is also similar to the way the rudder shaft opening is done on the Lady Washington. The tiller is a bit long, maybe two scale feet. I will trim it back a bit and reshape the end. The handle will be about three scale feet above the deck. There should be a binnacle somewhere behind the deck house on the center line, but I have found no references about how it would look on the original revenue cutters. In the early 1800s binnacles were typically boxes with the compass in the center and room for lanterns or candles on either side. The kit does include pieces for a box binnacle and instructions for building it. But there isn't much room in this build for it to fit between the deck house and tiller. Chapelle's drawings do not show a binnacle.

DECK PLANKING 3 Planking the deck is mostly finished. I still need to trim the planks around the deck house and hatches and build up the coaming around these features. These photos show the nibbing method. The planks were tapered from half the plank width back to where the outboard edge of the plank intersects the margin board. Then I glued a narrow strip of black construction paper along the inboard edge of the plank. The paper strip continued around the nib and back to the end of the taper. I applied glue to the bulkheads below the plank and a small bead along the full length of the paper "grout" and then pushed the plank into place into the nibbing slot. I am surprised that it came out as good as it did, considering that this is the first time I have "nibbed" a deck. The grout lines are very thin and mostly regular. If you look closely you can see a few places it isn't perfect. I used a one-in-four planking scheme. The very long taper planks at the outboard edge were the most tedious to create. I did not expect to get the nibbing to be symmetrical port to starboard - that seemed like asking for too much luck. However, it came out (almost) perfectly symmetrical! I did discover that when I built the hull 35 years ago the stern came out skewed a bit wider on the port side. The margin board is wider on the port side, but I cut the starboard side nib a bit deeper and made the planking come out symmetrical at the stern anyway. The deck has been coarse sanded to get all the plank tops to come out to a smooth camber. It would have been easier if all the planks had been close to the same thickness. But because the thickness of the planks supplied with the kit varied greatly I ended up with a lot of wood dust before I had a smooth deck. I still need to sand with a fine grit sandpaper to eliminate all of the scratches from the coarse sandpaper, and then polish the deck with #0000 steel wool. But I am satisfied with the results.

Yes, I used the 0.008 inch thick black construction paper for all the caulking. It looks pretty good to start with, but in the photos posted earlier the deck hasn't been sanded so the planks are not equal thickness. After the deck is sanded smooth and then polished with steel wool the caulking should look better.

DECK PLANKING 2 I have started planking the deck. I painted the inside of the hull black at places that could be seen through hatch gratings and the skylight. I built up sub deck supports around the deck house and hatch coamings. After a little more experimentation I was worried that the dry marker would bleed into cross-grain cuts at butt joints and nibs so I will use black construction paper for these joints. But this might make the grout seams different widths between planks and at the ends if I use the dry markers between planks, so I just decided to use the black paper for all of the grout seams. This was a lot easier than I had thought it would be! In this photo I have laid the six center planks the length of the deck. They are trimmed to fit around the deck house and hatches. I will have to trim the planking a bit around the hatch frames. The photo shows the rough deck without sanding. The black paper rises above the planks in places and shadows make the grout lines look thicker than they really are. The deck planks in the Mantua kit are all close to 5 mm wide, but the thickness varies from 1.5 mm to 2.5 mm, and most are thicker at one end than the other with some thickest at the middle. I sorted the planks by overall thickness and used the thickest at the center line and will progress outward with thinner parts, with the thinnest at the extreme outboard edges of the deck. This should minimize the amount of wood I have to sand off to get a smooth deck. However, the variation between the planks was pretty noticeable and the deck is nowhere near smooth at this point! I decided to nib the planks into the margin boards. I have read that this practice wasn't used until the mid 1800s, but I have found no good explanation of how the "hooking" was done before that. Some pictures suggest they started with wide planks and cut away most of the wood to get the "standard" plank width with the wide hook at the end, but that would be insanely wasteful. Other pictures and texts suggest they curved planks and nibbed them into adjacent planks to make the hooks in the adjacent planks, but this would have been extraordinarily time consuming and far less sensible than simple nibbing into margin boards. I wanted to use the deck planks supplied with the kit and this ruled out using some wider planks to make the hooks - I can't find matching wood in wider planks. So I just decided to use the much simpler nibbing process. Some early 1800s revenue cutter kits use nibbing. Anyway, this build is just practice for future builds, and the 1:96 CLG-5 model will have nibbed decking - a lot of it!. This image shows the main deck fittings placed in their approximate positions. The hatches are just sitting over the openings. They will rest on frames about a scale foot high with 6" comings around the frames. The deck house will also have 6" coamings around it. The hatches are not exactly the same dimensions as the rectangular hatches shown in Chapelle's drawings. I wanted to use the parts supplied in the kit, and they make square hatches. The kit has parts for three small hatch gratings and one large one. They are very close the same length shown in Chapelle's book.

Carl, Thanks for the tip. Phil

DECK PLANKING 1 I am about ready to start planking the deck. But first I had to decide how to apply the "grout" between the planks. I have read several different methods on this and other forums, and found someone enthusiastic about each. I decided to experiment a bit to see what worked best with the wood I will be using. I will use the wood that came with the kit. The instructions say the deck planks are "tiglio" or lime wood. It is a reddish-brown color. However, the hull planking is also supposed to be tiglio, and it is a much lighter color - similar to box wood, and that is more like what I think lime wood looks like. I'm not sure what the deck wood actually is. I tried six different methods to represent the grout between boards. I applied the edge treatment to short pieces of planking and glued (Duco Cement) three side by side onto a sheet of cardboard, pressing the planks together tightly. After the glue dried overnight I sanded the boards smooth and took these photos. The macro lens and high resolution close up images really magnify any imperfections! 1. EXPO dry marker. This is a common dry erase marker for white boards. Since these have a very fast evaporating solvent I thought maybe the pigment would not have a chance to soak into the wood. The solvent is pretty smelly so you probably should use it with adequate ventilation. The wide tip made it very easy and fast to apply. 2. Artist's charcoal. I used a "2B" hardness charcoal stick with about 1/4 inch square cross section. The width made it easy to apply to the edge of the boards, but it is a bit messy. 3. Pencil. I used an ordinary #2 pencil. I had to make many passes along the edges to get a significant amount of pigment on the boards, so this method was the slowest. 4. Black construction paper. The paper is 0.008 inch thick, and that is about equal to 3/8 inch at 1:48 scale. I do not know how they beveled the planks in the early 1800s, but in the mid 1900s the grooves between deck planks on US Navy ships was 3/8 inch wide. 5. Black plastic bag. I used an ordinary garbage bag. The thickness is 0.0005 inch, or about 1/40 inch at 1: 40 scale. That is much too narrow for 1:48 scale, but might work OK for 1:96 scale. It is also very flimsy and a bit difficult to control. Furthermore, when I sanded the planks after the glue dried (overnight) some of the plastic pulled out of the grooves. Apparently the plastic did not adhere to the glue. 6. Black paint. I was afraid that paint would seep into the wood and make the grout lines too wide and fuzzy. I used Craftsmart black premium satin acrylic paint from a local crafts store. I used it undiluted, applying with a brush. I think the dry marker (1) and black paper (4) methods gave the best results. But neither was perfect! The dry marker left slightly fuzzy edges, but from a normal viewing distance it isn't noticeable. The black paper right hand grout line is really nice - almost perfect scale. It has a very uniform width. But for some reason the left hand line is wide and fuzzy! Duco Cement has acetone and 2-propanol for solvents. I suspected the solvents might be bleeding the pigment from the paper, but when I tested a strip of the paper I couldn't get any pigment bleeding into glue on a white paper towel. On close inspection the left hand groove between the boards was unequal width at the top surface, and sanding had "fuzzed" the paper into the groove, After sanding to remove more wood the gap became narrower and the grout line was nicer, but still not perfect. One fellow who used this method recommended scraping the planks instead of sanding. I did scrape after sanding and the wood surface is less fuzzy. Also, careful selection of planks could avoid the wider gaps that create broader grout lines. Charcoal (2) and pencil (3) produced visible grout lines. The charcoal was most visible and uniform, probably because the charcoal stick was relatively soft and the wide tip applied more pigment. The #2 pencil was just too hard. I had to go over the edges of the wood strips several times to apply enough pigment, and the grout lines are almost invisible from a normal viewing distance. A softer pencil might work better. The black plastic was too thin and much too much trouble! The black paint did diffuse into the wood a bit, even though it was undiluted and fairly thick. The edges of the grout lines were a bit too fuzzy. **** I like the black paper method best, but it would be a bit tricky where the planks are nibbed into the margin boards. Maybe I will use the dry marker for ends and nibs. EDIT: The dry marker does diffuse into the wood a bit on cut ends perpendicular to the grain. I haven't decided if this is enough of a problem to worry about. EDIT: While looking through my modeling supplies I came across a small bottle of tar I collected back in the '60s while we were recaulking the decks on my first ship, the all-wood inshore minesweeper USS Cape MSI-2. I'm not sure, but I may have used this stuff to caulk the decks on a model I built in the '70s! I decided it would be far too messy to work with on this model.

DECK HOUSE NOTE: THIS DECK HOUSE WAS DESIGNED TO LEAVE A 3 FOOT CLEARANCE BETWEEN THE SIDES OF THE HOUSE AND THE BULWARKS. THIS IS NOT ENOUGH SPACE TO ROLL THE 6 POUNDER CANNONS PAST THE HOUSE TO THE STERN CHASER PORTS, ESPECIALLY AFTER THE PIN RAILS ARE ATTACHED TO THE BULWARKS. THE DECK HOUSE SHOULD BE 4 TO 6 FEET NARROWER (1/2" TO 3/4" AT 1:48 SCALE). I took measurements of Chapelle's drawing of the 80 ton revenue cutter and drew the outline of the deck house on the 2D CAD deck plan. Then I switched to 3D and constructed a 3D model. From this I generated 2D plans for the parts of the deck house. As you can see, I made some changes to the companionway hatch as construction progressed. This image shows the basic parts of the house. I measured the angles between the house sides and created triangular supports to hold the pieces in the correct configuration while the glue dried. The sides are 1/16 inch basswood and the roof is 1/32 inch thick (1.5 inch at 1:48) aircraft plywood. The sides and center support created a very stable structure, even without the roof attached. The skylight frame was built up from eight 1/16 inch thick basswood strips trimmed to the proper widths. The tiny window mullions were too thin to cut from the brittle basswood so I used 0.032 inch square polystyrene strips mortised together with the ends in cavities in the top wood frame. I have a clear plastic window to fit into the skylight frame after everything is sealed and painted. The companionway was a bit of a puzzle. I have seen several variations on real schooners and models, but the revenue cutter drawings only show the outline of the top with no details. I decided to build it like almost all similar companionways I have seen were put together. I added 0.042 inch square (about 1 mm) polystyrene strips for the rails the hatch top slides on. After the house is painted I will add door hardware and latches used to hold the doors open (the doors will be closed). I haven't modeled anything inside the deck house so I painted the inside of the hull below the skylight black. At first it looked to me that the space between the house roof and the bulwarks was very narrow. However, it measures about three scale feet, more than enough room for easy passage. The roof edge is only two scale feet above the deck. I will probably add wooden handrails along the roof edge. Next I will add support strips between the bulkheads around the edges of the house to support the deck planking. After the deck is laid I will add coamings around the house sides. I am still trying to find out where they placed the binnacle. On some more modern schooners the companionway was offset to the side and the binnacle was on the centerline of the deckhouse roof just forward of the tiller/wheel. Maybe there will be room between the tiller and the deck house to place the binnacle on the deck just aft of the companionway.

Derek, There were Baltimore clippers with one "Long Tom" gun on a carriage that could be rolled around and fired from either side. Some also had broadsides of smaller cannons. From what I have read these were mostly privateers, and not revenue cutters. I have been using the DesignCAD 3D MAX program since 1988 (it was ProDesign back then). The user interface is years ahead of any other program I have ever seen, and it has a full set of CAD functions. It sells for about $90 for the full 3D version. There is also a $70 2D only program - the same user interface with the 3D functions disabled. However, it is a bit dated, but they are making changes to bring it into the 21st century. Still, it is a relatively inexpensive full function CAD program with free tech support (I am an alpha/beta tester for the program). It's strongest point is the free user Forum that is monitored daily by a dozen or so experienced users all around the world. We are happy to answer questions for newbies. However, it has been a bit slow since the government ruled that Internet companies could extort users for more money in order to get back the network bandwidth they had before the change. You can get a free full function version of DesignCAD from the IMSI web site that will work for one month. But even though the program is much easier to use than some of the other CAD programs I use, it is still a steep learning curve. You won't become comfortable and confident using it in one month! But that is true of any program. I am not familiar with Fusion 360 so I can make no meaningful comparisons. But you should realize that there are two basic categories of 3D design programs - CAD and drawing. The difference is precision and output. CAD program are designed to create output to be used in construction and manufacturing. Everything is drawn with numerical offsets to create an exact model than can me used to produce 2D blueprints, 3D printer files and numerical machine control files. Some have decent output for illustration with ray-traced shadows, reflections, etc. (DesignCAD does not have ray tracing - yet - so the illustrations capability is quite limited). Precision is the key word, and CAD programs have a host of functions to draw points, lines, planes and solids to exact numerical accuracy. Drawing programs are a bit more loosey-goosey with regard to precision drafting. They may have a few basic numerical point placement functions, but they are mostly for designing imaginary objects and making pretty pictures. You can design good looking ship models with some of these programs, but they are not likely to be exact models. Some DesignCAD users create their initial designs in DesignCAD and then export the drawings to illustration programs to generate life-like images. This procedure is especially popular with architects who create 3D models and 2D blueprints in DesignCAD and then make pretty pictures of the designs to sell the ideas to customers. It is the best of both worlds. DesignCAD can import/export SketchUp files and this is a fairly inexpensive way to create pretty images from the CAD design. But, of course, you have to learn to use two programs instead of just one. **** Before I start cutting material I plan the work in 3D CAD and then use the 3D model to make 2D plans. You could see a bit of that in the pivot gun work. This often reveals problems that I might have not discovered until I had wasted a lot of time and materials. I am currently working on the deck house for the 80 ton revenue cutter model, and will post pictures soon. Sure enough, after creating a first design for the deck house I found several things that either were wrong or that I was unsure about.

Here is a link to the CAD project:

Richard, Thanks. The Mantua kit included six small cannons that I originally guessed to be about 3 pounders, based upon cannon dimensions in the Chapelle books and other sources. I thought these were much too small, because most writings said the revenue cutters had six pounders and larger. But I will go back and revisit that again. I knew that Doughty's designs did not have bulwarks, and I have no intention of removing them now that they are built. The Mantua cannons, as shown in the kit, are large enough that the top of the barrels just about rub the gunnel. I did see an odd but unique solution to this problem in one of the drawings in Chapelle's "Baltimore Clipper." One European ship had arched gunnels above the gun ports to allow adequate clearance for the guns. I think I do not want to go that route. Maybe I'll be satisfied with the single pivot gun. I am not trying for extreme historical accuracy - I have just finished 14 years of work creating a CAD model of the USS Oklahoma City CLG-5 that is extremely accurate, right down to every nut and bolt, and even 3/16" diameter rivets (1:1 scale). This revenue cutter model is just for fun, and to get back into practice with wood model building in preparation for another build - the Rattlesnake - that I want to be pretty accurate. I am trying to figure out how to do the hooked deck planking - the tutorials and articles I have found really don't tell much about it. Phil