Dr PR

More work on the bowsprit. I needed to make a section of the spar round and tapered. I wanted to use the square-octagonal-rounded technique because I had never done this before. So the first thing I did was taper the part forward of the bed (where the bowsprit passes through the bulwarks). The section between the blue tapes is the part to be rounded. To achieve the taper I just sanded each side of the piece to reduce the width of the part forward of the bed (blue tape on the left). There is extra material on the forward end that will be removed to make the tenon to fit into the bowsprit cap. There is a pretty simple trick for tapering a stick. Lay a sheet of sandpaper (100 grit in this case) on the workbench/table. Hold the piece of wood so the part to have the most material removed (the forward end of the bowsprit in this case) is on the sandpaper and the part you don't want to trim as much is off the paper. Now just move the wood back and forth, on and off the sandpaper, keeping the narrow end on the paper at all times, but moving the wider end on and off the paper. The narrow end is always in contact with the grit and has more material removed than the wider end that doesn't spend as much time in contact with the sandpaper. The result is an even taper. Next I used a knife and file to shave off each corner of the four sided piece between the bed and the bees (the forward end of the bowsprit) to make the section octagonal. Then I repeated the process on all eight edges to make it sixteen-sided. I wasn't too careful to get precisely straight edges because the next step was to file and sand the part to get the tapered conical section between the bed and the bees. For this I used a file with a flat side and a rounded side. The rounded side was used to get the transitions between the square sections and the round part. Then I chucked the piece in a hand drill and used fine grit sandpaper to get a smooth finish. The transitions from square to round are OK, but they would have come out better if I used a lathe with the round file positioned in the tool post. Also, I let the sandpaper ride up on the square parts a bit and this rounded what should be sharp corners. It looks like the bed extends a bit too far forward. The gammoning will go right in front of it. I may need to extend the round section a bit farther back. I also think I will need to replace the knee under the bowsprit with a longer piece. About 3/8 inch was broken off between when I started this hull back in the '80s and when I resumed the build a couple years ago. There isn't much left for the gammoning to be secured to. This was my first attempt to taper and round a spar starting with square stock and it was pretty easy. Finding the right size square stock was the hardest part!

The bowsprit is the correct place to start the rigging. Period books on rigging start there, because some of the fore mast rigging has to attach to the bowsprit. Here is a drawing of a schooner bowsprit rigging. It shows a two piece bowsprit and jib boom, but the terminology is the same. Here is another from Harold Underhill's "Masting and Rigging the Clipper Ship and Ocean Carrier" (one of the best references for sailing ship rigging, especially after the mid 19th century). This is for a late 19th century or early 20th century single pole bowsprit. It has a "running bobstay" that allows controlling the tension on the bobstay. Note where the inner bobstay attaches to the bowsprit - about half way along the length and not at the forward end. Often this is the only bobstay if the vessel had the martingale stay. Sometimes there were two separate bobstays on larger vessels. The bobstay usually had some type of tackle that could be adjusted to increase tension. There were several ways the bobstay attached to the stem (the leading edge of the hull). Sometimes a simple hole was drilled through the stem (top illustration) and the bobstay ran through the hole. Or a metal plate (bottom illustration) was fastened to the stem, and it had an eye that the bobstay fastened to (with a shackle for chain bobstays). I have even seen an arrangement that had a block shackled to the metal plate on the stem and another block attached to the bowsprit. The bobstay was the line running through these blocks with the running end (loose end) leading up to a cleat on the bulwark - this allowed tension to be tightened on the bobstay. I don't think this was a very common rig. In all cases the bobstay attached to the stem at a point above the normal load waterline. If the vessel has a dolphin striker (sometimes called a martingale) it will be attached to the bowsprit about half way out, or just forward from where the (inner) bobstay attaches. Usually where the fore stay or jib stay attaches to the bowsprit. There are a lot of variations here, and some schooners didn't have a dolphin striker. The bobstay(s) and martingale stay pulled down on the bowsprit/jib boom to take the vertical strain from the force of the sails. The bowsprit/jib boom guys took the horizontal strain on the spars. There are many photos of modern schooners on the Internet, and some very good photos of bowsprit rigging. Search for these vessels: Belle Poule La Recouvrance Etoile Pride of Baltimore The spar that fastened to the stem was often found on racing schooners to spread the foot of the fore staysail out to the side, much as a spinnaker boom is used for the spinnakers on smaller vessels. I think John Leather discusses this in his "Gaff Rig Handbook."

It has been a while since I posted an update. I am still working on the belaying plan, and I have added a few details like the side ladders. I have drawn up plans for the masts and bowsprit. The kit came with dowels and I was originally going to use them. But I decided to make more realistic masts and bowsprits. After all, this is a learning exercise, and I wanted to have a go at making the masts and spars from square stock. I have started on the bowsprit. I have a 3/8" (0.375 inch or 9.52 mm) square piece of mahogany. The maximum diameter of the bowsprit is 0.322 inch (8.18 mm), so I needed to remove about 0.05 inch (1.3 mm). But the piece I am using was slightly curved, so the first thing I had to do was sand two adjacent sides to get flat surfaces for further shaping. I didn't want to try to reduce the size of the piece by sanding - that would take a long time and a lot of elbow grease. So I decided to use my 40+ year old Dremel motor tool, speed control and drill press as a milling machine. I have used this rig before - the sides for the cannon carriages were made with it. The drill press is a piece of junk, as many have commented before. The motor tool is fixed in position and the table moves up and down. But the table won't stay locked in the vertical position and the vibration from the tool causes it to slowly lower, so I occasionally had to reposition it and start over. But it did the job, I have been waiting for warm dry weather so I could do this outside. Removing that much material makes a lot of dust! I did trim the piece down to 0.322 +/- 0.001 inch (8.18 mm). I am really thinking about getting a Sherline mini mill for this type of work! But first I need to build a shop to put it in!! The next thing to do was enlarge the opening in the bow. The original dowel was 0.303 inch (7.69 mm) diameter. The part of the bowsprit that penetrates the bow (the bed) will be 0.322 inch square. With a bit of filing I opened the hole so the new piece would fit. Then I used a saw and files to shape the tenon at the foot of the bowsprit to fit into the timberhead step. When this was done the rough bowsprit fit into place. The base of the bowsprit will be tapered and the housing will be shaped octagonal. I am also thinking of adding some knightheads right at the bow to support the bowsprit.

That thread looks like carpet thread to me. I have a spool that is the same pale green color and waxy. I got it decades ago for model rigging because it is not fuzzy like the stuff that used to come with ship model kits and makes nice rigging. I painted it black for the standing rigging.

You are correct about getting side tracked and doing things that aren't really necessary for the model. Since I had the (almost) full blueprint set I started out to create the entire internal structure for the OK City - I was impressed of a CAD model of the Yamato that had all the frames, longitudinals and bulkheads. After messing with that for about a month I realized that it really wasn't necessary. And I am an expert at getting sidetracked. I started my USS Oklahoma City web page (www.okieboat.com) to post modeling pictures. I got carried away and now there are something like 88 pages, most of it the history of the ship and the Cleveland class, plus the history of the development of the Talos missile (including GMM manuals), detailed descriptions of the weapons systems, engineering plant, ship's crew, sea stories ... It took 14 years to complete the web page and the CAD model. I just like learning about things!

Hans, Nice work. I'm like you, I started in CAD long ago in 2D days and adapted to 3D when it became available. So I have had 30+ years to learn the tricks. For prospective 3D CAD beginners there is one major hurdle, especially if they are familiar with 2D drawing/drafting. You have to forget everything you have learned and start over! In 2D work you create a flat drawing representing a 3D object, and there are many fairly standard techniques for this to show projections, dimensions,etc. But in 3D you work in a virtual universe to create the actual 3D object. There is almost nothing in common with 2D drawing. You have to think in 3D, work in your virtual universe, and build the full dimension object. It is the same difference between drawing a house plan and then building the house. So a beginning 3D designer has to learn the quirks and bugs in the software while trying to learn to work in a virtual reality. Like everything else it seems to be difficult at first. But if you are persistent it will eventually "click" and once over this hump it is a lot easier. It really isn't any different from learning to build a good scratch built model in the real world - but it is a lot easier to fix mistakes!

Very interesting! The Shark might make a nice scratch build project.

My post about topsail schooner rigging gives a good idea about how there were many variations - I sometimes think as many variations as there were schooners! The topsail schooners probably had the most complex schooner rig. But many (most) schooners did not carry any square sails. For the fore mast on these you can just repeat the rig that was on the main mast, with or without a boom on the fore sail foot. Another catch is the configuration of the masts. Some smaller schooners just had single pole masts without top masts. These usually had the gaffs hoisted high on the masts and had no gaff topsails. Some had short topmasts with a topsail rigged above the gaff, at least on the main mast. There is quite a bit of variation in the complexity of the tops at the mast doubling. Some had a gaff topsail on the fore mast and others had a main top staysail on the main top stay. And I have found eleven different types of fore-and-aft topsails on the fore and main masts (I show seven in my schooner rigging post, and need to update the post). "Bermuda rig" schooners had just a large triangular sail on the main mast with the foot attached to the boom. These had no gaff, but early versions actually had a short spar attached to the top of the sail (it was trapezoidal) that was used to hoist the sail. Your Elmina model doesn't have a racing hull like the one shown in Chapelle's book, and it has very short top masts. I would pick a rig typical of a working schooner or private yacht, with large gaff sails on both masts. The top masts are not tall enough for the typical gaff topsails so these masts may have just been supports for the gaff peak and throat halliards, and for stays for the fore sheets. However, there were some unusual jackyard topsails that flew on two spars, one rigged to the end of the gaff (jackyard) and the other (topsail yard) hoisted to the top of the topmast, with the triangular sail flying between them. These were temporary sails and were hoisted aloft from the deck. But this seems to have been used mainly on racing boats of the late 19th century to get around rules that limited topsail size. The model does have a boom for the fore staysail, so it probably also had a boom for the fore sail, as well as a longer boom for the main sail. Since it had a simple spar bowsprit I'd guess it had the fore staysail and a single jib, with perhaps a flying jib that could be rigged if needed. **** Now for the hard part. After a sail plan is selected the necessary standing and running rigging lines are fairly obvious variations on common arrangements. But the belaying points for all those ropes on the deck and bulwarks were almost never documented because "everyone knew how to do that." The seem to be two simple rules. First, the lower lines lead forward and the higher the line the farther aft it leads. And lines that run through blocks or sheaves on the mast lead down to the base of the mast while lines coming down from yardarms lead outboard to bulwarks or on deck close to the bulwarks. Often the higher lines on the mast also lead outboard to the bulwarks. The actual belaying points could be ring bolts, cleats or pinrails. All this varied from ship to ship, but the end result was rigging that did not foul the other lines and ran smoothly. **** There are two clues to the size of the vessel and whether it carried square sails. The beam was wider relative to the length on smaller vessels. Larger ships had a longer length to width ratio - but not by too much. But the beam to width ration can tell the approximate size of the ship (small or large). Ships with square sails on the foremast usually had the widest part of the beam forward near the foremast that carried the greater weight of sails and spars. The wider beam was more buoyant and could support more weight. In this case the foremast was often greater diameter than the main mast and usually a bit shorter. Full fore-and-aft rigged hulls had the widest part of the beam midships near the heavier main mast and both masts were the same diameter, again with a shorter fore mast.

There are several basic ways to rig a schooner, and many variations of each. Unless you can find a rigging plan (or lots of photos) of the Elmina you will have to pick a plan and go with it. "The Global Schooner" by Karl Heinz Marquardt is the best reference I have found for schooners. Howard Chapelle mentions the Elmina briefly in "The History of American Sailing Ships" (Bonanza Books, New York) and has a hull lines plan on page 337, but doesn't show the deck layout or rigging plan. Elmina was a schooner yacht that was used for racing. He has a lot of examples of the sail plans and some rigging for this type of schooner. Chapelle's "The American Fishing Schooners" has a tremendous amount of details about schooners and schooner rigging. Leather's "Gaff Rig Handbook" has a lot of information about racing yachts. Here are two extraordinary builds of large schooner models. Lots of very good ideas: https://modelshipworld.com/topic/19848-schooner-germania-nova-by-keithaug-scale-136-1908-2011/?do=findComment&comment=605204 https://modelshipworld.com/topic/12515-schooner-altair-by-keithaug-scale-132-1931-finished/?do=findComment&comment=378702

It was common to have running backstays port and starboard. The windward stay was hauled taut to take the strain while the lee stay was slacked to allow the boom to swing. This was also sometimes done with the mainstay on schooners. I don't know how you would transfer a backstay from one side to the other while tacking. With single stays the forestays and halliards would prevent swinging them in front of the mast, while the sail, boom and gaff would prevent moving them across aft of the mast. Also, there would be a period when nothing was supporting the mast. I'll be interested in seeing what you discover.

Dave, The NRG figures come in a variety of scales. You have to select a model and then select the scale. (unfortunately, you can't select the scale first to see what is available). It appears not all figures are available in all scales.

I agree with Mark! In the Wikipedia entry for the USS Oklahoma City CLG-5 there is an incorrect date for the first time a surface-to-surface ARM missile was successfully used in combat. The date is wrong by about a year! I was the officer in charge during that shot and remember it well. I have documented the date, and I have corrected the error several times, but someone keeps changing it back to the wrong date! Quite a bit on Wikipedia is just speculation and not researched well.

Dave, To reiterate what folks have said here, ropes and cable sizes were given in circumference. However, the circumference of ropes and cables was calculated from the diameter of the mast. That tripped me up the first time around and I was calculating some enormous rope sizes!

Once again, extraordinary craftsmanship! Beautiful models.

Another way to create complex curved railings like this is to build them up with many thin strips bent around a jig and glued together. The strip width is a bit larger than the railing vertical thickness. After the laminated strips are glued the railing can be sanded to the desired thickness. A real advantage of this method is that the railing is really tough and there is no "grain" for it to break along. The downside is that it is more work than just cutting a piece out of thin plywood.

Glomar, The major problem with sanding the hull planking smooth is sanding a hole through the planks. So you want to go slow and easy. This can be a problem if the edges of your planks do not fit together smoothly. Some kits do not have enough bulkheads - the gaps between bulkheads are so wide that the planks can flatten between bulkheads instead of following a smooth curve. Then when you start sanding to get a smooth curve on the hull you can sand through the planks near the bulkheads. You can avoid this problem by inserting extra bulkheads between the wide spaced kit parts, or by filling the gaps with balsa and sanding it to shape before adding the planking. I plank hulls before attaching the deck. This allows me to shine a light into the hull and look for thin spots in the planking. I can always put a layer of putty inside the planking if it is getting thin, and I like to coat the inside of the hull with thin epoxy to glue everything together firmly. This prevents seams from opening between planks in the future. The best way to avoid holes due to sanding is to bend and fit the planks carefully so the edge of a plank does not rise above the surface of the neighboring planks. Then you need very little sanding to get a smooth surface. There is an art to accomplishing this, and there are several planking tutorials on the forum.

Valeriy, Considering the materials and methods you are using, I think it will last a very long time. Hopefully it will be displayed in a museum some day - your work deserves it!

Of course if the ship is tied up to a dock the sails would be furled (unless they were drying) and the anchor would be stowed (not hanging from the cathead). But when anchoring a sailing ship some of the sails were flying in order to maneuver the ship and the anchor would be hanging from the cathead prior to dropping. DArcy Lever's "The Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor" describes the procedure for dropping and raising anchor. One of my complaints about the movie "Master and Commander," which I enjoy very much, is that in one scene they show the ship running mid ocean with the anchor dragging in the water! That would reduce the ship's speed, acting as a "sea anchor" although that is something entirely different.

Darcy Lever's "Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor" (section 69) describes catting and fishing the anchor. This is a general description but probably represents the common method for handling the anchor on British and American vessels in the 19th century. The cat tackle (cathead sheaves, cat block and hook) are used to raise the anchor up under the cathead (this is "catting the anchor"). Then a stopper (rope) is used to secure the arms (top) end. One end of this stopper is either secured around the cathead ot reeved through a hole in the cathead with knots to prevent the rope from pulling through. The loose end of the stopper is run through the anchor hoop and then secured to a timberhead on the rail or a stout cleat attached to the cathead. After the stopper is secured the cat tackle can be removed from the anchor. The stopper supports the and of the anchor. However, it seems to be more common in ship models to leave the cat tackle attached to the anchor hoop. Even so, the tackle is not supporting the anchor and is slack. A separate fish tackle is used to raise the fluke end of the anchor. The fish tackle and boom are temporary rigs and are stowed after the anchor is raised, so they are not usually modeled. But the "fish hook" on the end of the fish tackle is hooked under the inner arm of the anchor and the tackle hauls the fluke end up to the rail (this is "fishing the anchor"). Then the shank painter (another stopper of rope or chain) is looped around the anchor shaft and the crown (where the fluke arms meet the anchor shaft). One end of the shank painter is secured to a timber head on the rail (or a stout cleat on smaller ships). The running end is hauled up and secured to another timber head or cleat. Then the fish tackle is removed. The inner fluke arm was often brought up and over the rail, while the stock (wooden arms at the top) are pulled flat against the hull. When the anchor is stowed this way the head is supported by the stopper on the cathead and the fluke end is supported by the shank painter. On some ships the anchor cable was removed from the anchor hoop and stowed below but most models show the cable still attached. Dropping the anchor was more or less the opposite procedure. The anchor was suspended below the cathead by the stopper, and the anchor was dropped by releasing the end of the stopper that was attached to the cleat or timberhead.

Webster's "Third New International Dictionary:" bellerophon: bel'-ler-o-phon (emphasis on the first syllable). Mythological creature who slew the Chimera with the help of Pegasus. I first encountered the name in "Forbidden Planet." Dr. Morpheus' ship was the Bellerophon. If I recall correctly, Walter Pidgeon pronounced it with a bit more accent on the second syllable, and since Morpheus was a philologist (someone who studies languages) who is to question?

I think Rob and Henry are correct. Lines that take a great strain, such as sheets and lifts would not be run through fairleads on the stays. I believe Underhill actually says it was common for buntlines and clewlines to be belayed to the same pin. These lines normally have no strain on them and they are always used together. He also mentions that these lines from the same sail may run through holes in the same fairlead on a stay. Sometimes braces on topsail schooners are lead through fairleads on stays in order to route them away from gaffs that must be free to swing outboard.

As far as I can tell there is no record of a schooner named "Albatros" so whatever kit you get will probably not be an accurate representation of a real ship. If you want a kit with no guesswork, get a plastic model. Some model companies are creating very good documentation, but this is the exception and not typical of most models. Get the instructions on line if you can and see what you are getting into. I am building the 1980s version of the Mantua Albatros "Goleta typica de Baltimora." The plans are pretty good, but not exceptionally detailed, and parts of the rigging are hard to follow. But the instructions are one page and say "put the parts together." It does appear to be a fairly good representation of a topsail schooner like a Baltimore clipper. Looking through Chapelle's "The Baltimore Clipper" the deck plan of the kit is very similar to several actual vessels. The fittings seem to be just whatever they had on hand that was close to the right scale. There is a newer version of the Mantua kit and at least one build log on the Forum.

Roger, I had a similar reaction to Marquardt's book. Not only is he European (German) but he lives in Australia! This does lead to some difficulty understanding his terminology for rigging. He is primarily concerned with a replica of the first schooner to sail to/around Australia but has many excellent drawings and illustrations of other vessels. And he has the audacity to claim Americans didn't invent the schooner (although he does include very convincing evidence that it probably evolved in Holland and other parts of northern Europe)! Wefalck clarified some of it elsewhere on the forum, noting that Marqurdt sometimes used northern European/Baltic terminology which is different from English and American jargon for the same parts of rigging. My biggest complaint is that the book is very poorly proof read and edited. I have found dozens of typos and places where paragraphs were transposed and out of order. But if you get past that (and I did) the book contains a wealth of information about schooner construction, masts, sails and rigging. And he does provide tables of schooner dimensions from many authors and for many vessels. So far it is the best reference I have found for schooners. Lennarth Petersson's "Rigging Period Fore-and Aft Craft" illustrates the rigging of three vessels, a British naval cutter, a French lugger, and an American topsail schooner. The illustrations are based upon period models, so they represent only one variation of rigging for each type vessel. It is very useful, but has limited information on the variations within each type. There is very little text description and lots of illustrations, showing every line of rigging. I found John Leather's "The Gaff Rig Handbook" to be an interesting read about the history of development of the fore-and-aft rig. But it is almost useless as a reference! Information about rigging types and details is scattered throughout the book, and heavily favors modern yachts. The index lists only people and vessel names and has nothing about the details of rigging. You practically have to reread the entire book every time you want to find specific details, so it is nearly useless as a reference. Harold Hahn's "The Colonial Schooner 1763-1775" is a good read for the history of early American schooners. He has about 150 pages for the development of these schooners, with details about hull construction and plans for the hulls of two vessels. But he has only 5 1/2 paged for rigging, and they basically say "schooners had masts and sails." David MacGregor's "The Schooner" is concerned mainly with the history of the development of this type vessel. It has many small line drawings for hulls, deck layout and sail plans, but not much detail about construction.

Lees is a great reference for square rig English (and early American) ships, but he says little (nothing?) about fore-and-aft rigs. The rules for fore-and-aft rigs are different from those for square rigs. Primarily, the mast are smaller diameter, so the dimensions for rigging (based upon mast diameter) are also smaller. An excellent reference for for-and-aft rigs is Karl Heintz Merquardt's "The Global Schooner" (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, USA, 2003). Like Lees, Marquardt has lots of illustrations and tables giving dimensions of actual vessels. Schooners, but much of the details can be used with other small fore-and-aft vessels.

Valeriy, Good to hear from you! I've been worried for your safety. Keep modeling. This will be over someday. Soon, I hope.