Dr PR

I agree with Bob. 150 grit leaves a lot of scratches in the wood, especially if you rub really hard. These scratches may be hard to remove with 300-400 grit, but you will eventually get a much nicer surface. I then use #0000 steel wool to get a nice satin finish. Be sure to wipe the surface with a clean cotton rag (or brush it with a stiff soft brush) after using steel wool or sandpaper. Sanding can leave grit on the wood and steel wool will leave tiny steel fibers. You should remove these before applying the next coat of paint or sealer. If you want to seal a porous wood, especially a dark wood like walnut, save the dust from sanding. Then mix it with a clear paint (whatever type you are using) to make a sanding sealer. You might want to dilute the paint 1:1 with thinner to get a thin sealer. Apply a light coat and let it dry. Then rub it with #0000 steel wool to remove the paint from the surface and leave the paint/dust in the pores. Repeat applications of the sealer until you get the surface you want. A final light rub down with #0000 steel wool will give a satin finish. Caution: commercial sanding sealers usually have talc powder in them. It dries white, and will make pores in dark wood stand out like a sore thumb. However, if you are going to paint the sealed wood with an opaque color the commercial sealers are easier to use than mixing your own.

I have been studying the rigging of topsail schooners for several years, and I am of the opinion that there is no single "accurate" rigging plan. From photos of modern schooners and drawings of historical ships it seems there are about as many ways to rig the sails as there are ships. And the rigging on a ship sometimes changed while it was in service. I think Lennarth Peterssons's Rigging Period Fore-And-Aft Craft is a pretty good general guide. He states that the rigging plan is based upon a single model with a few modifications, so you can't expect every topsail schooner to have been rigged this way. Every shipowner, Captain and bosun had a preferred way to do things. Unless you have photos, or very reliable drawings, of the ship as it was rigged at the time you are modeling it you will never have an "accurate" plan. Petersson's book is a good guide for the general way the rigging was done. However if it has a fault it is that it is over rigged! He shows just about every possible line. I don't know if any single ship carried all of that rigging, but I know of quite a few that didn't. For example, he shows how bowlines were rigged to control the fore course and topsail, but I have never seen this used on a schooner. It is much more common on larger square riggers. Another example is the lifts and halliards for the foremast spars. Look at photos of modern schooners and you will see that some have both, some have only the halliards and some use only the lifts. Petersson shows a way to rig the peak halliards for the gaffs, and other books show a half dozen ways to rig them. The "accuracy" of a ship model doesn't require that every line be rigged in some perfect way. It is more important to have all the lines necessary to control the rig, however these lines are tied off on deck. And some ships did tie lines to cleats on the shrouds.

Anyone want a complete Nikon F3 system with a selection of focus screens and a 6X vertical viewfinder that replaces the pentaprism? The two rail bellows attachment allows the lens to be shifted side to side and rotated a bit to accomplish the effects Charles mentions - to a degree. I have used it with Nikon digital bodies, but everything is totally manual. Photo stacking does work, and I don't find it to be much more trouble than editing ordinary photos. This picture was made with 12 stacked photos. The model is 22.5 inches long from the tip of the bowsprit to the ends of the boat booms on the stern, and it is in focus the entire distance! The pictures were made with a Nikon Micro Nikkor 105 mm f2.8 macro lens at f25 and 1 second. However, all is not perfect. I did the stacking in Photoshop and it did get confused at the lower left. Looking at the plank edges you can see where it picked the wrong images and the edges are out of focus. Still, a 22.5 inch depth of field would be very hard to get any other way. Another way to get an extended depth of field is to use a long focal length lens and photograph the object from a long distance with a small diaphragm opening (large f-stop number). You will need a lot of light and a lot of room to set up the shot.

Allan, I used rub-ons that had a noticeable thickness - probably vinyl. I am not familiar with the dry-transfer lettering you mention. Something else to learn about! The technique I described - using the rub-on letters as stencils - has one special virtue. You can use the technique on contoured/textured surfaces and the resulting painted letters conform perfectly with the pattern in the surface. It is difficult to get decals to do this, even with the decal setting solutions, and I can't imagine getting a rub-on to conform to a textured surface. By textured surface I mean vent louvers, corrugated panels, etc. Rub-on work fine with smooth surfaces.

If you have painted something with a thin glossy finish and you want semi-gloss you can just rub it with 0000 steel wool. Just be sure the finish is dry/hard before you use the steel wool. After rubbing with steel wool rub with a clean cloth to remove any fragments of the steel wool. The white stuff used on hull bottoms was something like white lead and tallow. It sealed the wood and inhibited marine growth. It wasn't as good as copper, but was a lot cheaper and easier/faster to apply. Again it was a matter of cost.

I have used rub-on letters in a rather unorthodox way to get neat permanent lettering on models (rub-ons may peel off after a few years). Rub-ons are fairly thick at model scales. This is OK if you are modeling wooden or metal letters/numbers that were attached to the ship. But they are unrealistically thick for painted letters/numbers, so I use them as stencils for painted letters. 1. Paint the surface the color of the letters. Let it dry thoroughly. 2. Rub the desired lettering on the painted surface. 3. Paint over the letters with the desired surface color. Airbrush is best for this. Let it dry. 4. Carefully peel off the rub-on letters/numbers. I originally did this in desperation because I needed some lettering in a font and color that was not produced in decals or rub-ons. But the correct font was available in rub-ons in different colors. The result was perfect letters in the correct font and color, they had no raised edges like decals or rub-ons, and they were permanent.

The friction of the wheels does absorb some of the energy, but as you can see from this video, the gun does recoil until the breech line stops it. In this video there is no breech line and the gun rolls quite a distance.

Hi Paul, It's been a while since I visited your build. You asked a couple of questions, and it looks like you solved the problems nicely. Like you, I have planked directly on bulkheads. They often are not all the correct height. I use a strip of planking to find the low ones and add a bit of wood to the top. When they are all about the correct height I use a long sanding block to make final corrections. Then the planks go down in a smooth deck. I envy you having the real thing to visit while you build your model.

Greetings from Corvallis!

John Leather's The Gaff Rig Handbook has information and drawings for fore and aft rigs. Some of the information applies to 19th century ships, but there is a lot of information about 20th-21st century vessels, including racing yachts. It has quite a bit of the history of gaff rigs, but not very many actual sail plans and rigging diagrams.

Mike, Colors varied by nationality and by the cost of pigments. In the early 1800s in America there apparently weren't many choices. Howard Chapelle says in The Baltimore Clipper (Edward W. Sweetman Company, New York, 1968, page 170): "The painting of the hull seems to have varied widely as yellow, black, green and blue were used, with white or black bands. On privateers, the inside of the bulwarks were often painted red or brown, but the decks were usually bright [unfinished]. Yellow and black were popular colors, however, for pilot boats in 1812-1814. They had yellow sides with black mouldings, wales, or trim. Very few were painted white, as it made them too prominent at a distance, which was considered naturally, a handicap during the war." And that is the entirety of the references that I have found specific to the colors of Baltimore schooners! If it was a navy ship it would be painted with standard navy color for the nationalitys. However, in the late 1700s and early 1800s American ships were often painted in British colors, although the US Navy had no official colors until sometime in the 1820s or 1830s. Some captains or ship owners used unorthodox color schemes. I have read that deck houses and other deck furniture were often the same color as the inside of the bulwarks, at least up to about 1840 (red is popular with ship modelers). Then white deck furniture became popular. If you have ever been on a pitching deck in a rough sea on a dark rainy night you will appreciate the virtue of white or light colored deck furniture! I have also read that less expensive ships were painted with the least expensive paints available, and Baltimore schooners were usually cheaply built.

I have been following this thread with interest. Most of the Baltimore schooners in Chapelle's The Baltimore Clipper do have one or two backstays rigged high on the fore and main top masts and leading down to the channels (aft of the shrouds) where they were rigged with deadeyes (often smaller than the deadeyes for the shrouds) or just eyes with lanyards to hold them taut. Because these ships had extreme rake to the masts the channels were not far aft of the masts and the back stays were almost vertical. This allowed the fore boom (if any) and main boom to swing fairly wide, and the gaffs could swing far out to spread the sails for catching following winds. However, in some cases the main mast had a backstay that ran far aft to the bulwark. These had a tackle with one block anchored to the deck (or hooked to an eyebolt in the deck) and the other on the stay. The running part was attached on one end to a block and the free end was secured to a cleat or belaying pin on the bulwark. When running with the wind the windward backstay was pulled taut to take the strain and the leeward was slacked (and even unhooked) to allow the main sail to swing wide to catch the wind. **** The mainstays were rigged in several ways. The simplest was just a stay that ran from the main top to the fore top above the fore gaff. That way the stay did not interfere with the gaff. The forestays took the load on the main mast. Some plans show fixed dual mainstays (or mainstay and preventer) that ran from the main top to knightheads on deck forward (larger ships) or aft (smaller ships) of the fore mast. In these cases the fore gaff sail (or foresail) did not have a boom, but had port and starboard sheets to the clew (lower aft corner of the sail). When tacking the foresail was hauled over the mainstays with the sheets. They often had a brail to haul the clew to the fore top to help pull it over the mainstays. A third and apparently common method of rigging the mainstays was as mentioned above. Two stays ran from the main top forward to the port and starboard bulwarks forward of the fore mast. They were rigged with a tackle with one block anchored to the deck (or hooked to an eyebolt in the deck) and the other on the stay. The running part was attached on one end to a block and the free end was secured to a cleat or belaying pin on the bulwark. When the ship was tacking into the wind (the force of the wind pushing aft on the sails and mast). the windward side mainstay was pulled tight to take the strain on the mast and the lee side was slackened to allow the fore gaff sail to swing wide to catch the wind from the jib. **** With the tackle rigged backstays and mainstays a change of course or wind required adjusting the stays so the windward stays took the forces on the mast (the leeward stays did not carry a load so they could be slackened to allow more freedom of movement for the gaff sails. **** All of these arrangements seem to be used in modern schooners. If you examine photos closely you can see the same ship with mainstays and backstays all rigged taut or the lee sides slacked when under sail, and not rigged at all when motoring in and out of port with sails furled.

Any measurement taken from a printed drawing is subject to many errors. As mentioned above, line widths make finding dimensions problematic. Some printers do not actually print to scale and add some error to the measurement. However, this isn't always a big problem. Things are not built to random dimensions. Engineers usually work in some units of measurement (inches, feet, millimeters, meters, etc.). For WWII US ships things were designed in feet, inches and fractions of inches (1/2, 1/4, 1/8 and occasionally 1/16 and 1/32). It is a lot simpler if the original units are metric! Engineers usually don't design things in odd fractions, like 1.297 inches. If your measurement from the drawing scales to 1.297 inches (1:1 scale) it's a good bet that it really should be 1.25 inches. If you know the units of measure (inches, mm, etc.) the part was designed in you can correct some of the measurement errors by rounding to the nearest common fraction.

It would be useful if you gave the resulting output file size in kilobytes or megabytes. Some web sites and email systems limit the size of files that can be sent.

I have used several bitmap to vector converters, but not recently. Some of the CAD programs I have used have built-in raster to vector converters. Adobe used to have a stand-alone converter long ago but I'm not sure about the name (Streamline?). None of them have worked very well. As mentioned above, bitmap lines have non-zero thickness and vector lines are zero thickness (but they may be displayed with a variety of thicknesses). If the bitmap line is not always the same number of pixels wide - and they rarely are - the converter may have trouble guessing the line center and generate a bunch of slightly zig-zag segments instead of a single straight line. Curves become a series of short segments instead of a smooth curve. Another problem is the way the converters deal with intersecting lines. Many use algorithms that fail to see across intersections to create a continuous line. Instead, at the intersection they switch from the original line to the crossing line. So at an "X" you get two ">" and "<" lines instead of "/" and "\". The result is really bizarre convoluted lines. The result can be extremely large files with huge numbers of short line segments. I agree that it is usually better to just hand trace the drawing. However, the bitmap to vector conversions are not totally useless. You can put the converted drawing on one layer and lock the layer. Then on other layers you can trace it quickly just by snapping to points on the converted drawing. This is a LOT faster than trying to draw over the bitmap image. It isn't perfect though. You will have to go back and make some corrections, especially to get parallel lines actually parallel.

I have used a clear epoxy paint to seal the inside of model hulls. It was a paint model airplane builders used to seal balsa engine mounts to make them fuel proof. It soaks into the planks and bulkheads and make a very strong hull. One hull 35 years old has never developed cracks between the planks due to wood shrinkage - a couple of older hulls have developed cracks. And it doesn't change color as far as I can tell (not a problem inside hulls). One caution about epoxy paints. We used white epoxy paint in the missile house and nuclear weapons magazines on the USS Oklahoma City CLG-5 back in the 60s and 70s. It produced a hard surface that resisted wear better than ordinary Navy paints, even on the decks! This was important because the ship was in WESTPAC for ten straight years and couldn't offload ammunition to clear the magazines for painting. But the white paint yellowed fairly quickly. Here is a related tidbit. The gray paint the Navy provided for painting exterior surfaces wore off quickly. We had to repaint very often. I remarked that we should use gray epoxy paint because it would last longer. I was asked what we would do then to keep the sailors busy! Chip, prime, paint, chip prime, paint ...

I don't recall now where I have seen it, but I remember seeing a picture/drawing showing muskets stowed around the capstan. My guess is that they were placed there before an action for ready access when boarding an enemy ship. They wouldn't normally be stowed there but would be below in the armory. I can see having a swivel gun mount on the capstan. The capstan mount was very strong and could take the force of recoil of the gun. If the ship was being boarded the capstan would give a good field of fire for sweeping the decks of boarders with grapeshot/shrapnel. The gun could also be fired at men in the tops of an enemy ship at close range.

I have followed this topic with interest. I looked around on the Internet and found a company (GoodFellow) that sells very fine high purity wire, down to 0.01 mm, much finer than the "LCD cutting wire." And you can get it in a variety of elements and alloys, even very toxic elements like beryllium. However, a meter of 0.01 mm very pure copper wire was US$459! A source of very fine copper wire is "extremely flexible" stranded test lead wire. We used some of this in a project a while back. It comes in a variety of strands and wire sizes up to 1064 strands of 56 AWG wire ( 0.000492 inch, 0.0125 mm diameter). 10 feet (3.049 meters) for US$26.43 (Mueller Electric WI-M-10-10-0, Mouser 548-WI-M-10-10-0). That is 10 feet x 1064 strands = 10,640 feet (3243 meters). That should last a while! Virtually all metals will burn in air if they are fine enough. But wood, plastic, thread and just about anything else that is 0.02 mm diameter will also burn in air if heated hot enough. So it is pointless to worry about fine wires burning. By the time the wire is hot enough the rest of the model will be ashes.

The breech rope did provide the final stop for recoil. But most of the recoil energy was absorbed by the gun tackle. If you have ever used multiple block tackle to hoist an object and then let the loose end go you will have seen that the tackle slows the fall. The loose end of the gun tackle rope was laid out straight on the deck (or held by the tackle men) so it would run through the blocks without fouling. The line running through the blocks served as a shock absorber to slow the gun. The breech line then stopped it in the loading position. This is described in detail in several 19th century ordnance manuals.

As I understand it, the snow mast allowed the gaff sail to be raised and lowered without interference from the main course spar and rig, and any bands or other features on the main mast. In this way the sail could be operated independently of the other sails and yards, much like the gaff sail on the mizzen mast of three masted ships. The gaff boom and the sail were attached to and moved along the snow mast. On later ships the snow mast was replaced by a cable that the sail could ride on, and later still it was done away with entirely.

Bob, Thanks for the info. I want to emphasize one point you made. I have been painting (art) with oils since I was a kid. Artists oils take a very long time to dry properly - I suspect some of Rembrandt's paintings aren't fully dry yet! Actually, the stuff I used took about three weeks to harden so it wouldn't smudge. As you said, this is a virtue for artists because the colors can be mixed and spread easily on the canvas, and can be retouched for a week or so. Faster drying paints are far less forgiving! For modelers the long drying time is a nuisance. You can mix a fast evaporating solvent to make the paint dry faster. But like you said, this results in a duller finish - like satin or even flat. And this is the part I want to caution people about. If you are going to use oil paints and dilute them with a thinner, always use the exact same paint to thinner ratio if you are going to go back over with multiple layers or spot touch up. Different ratios of paint and thinner dry with different amounts of "dullness." Touch up spots or overlapping layers that are done with a different paint/thinner ratio will stand out like a sore thumb if viewed in the right light. I speak from experience!

I don't know what the experts do, but I have a suggestion. IF you are planking on a plank on bulkhead hull, and IF you haven't installed the deck, and IF you are doing single layer planking THEN don't sweat the edge gluing. Plank the hull and then paint/coat the inside of the planking with thin epoxy - epoxy paint. It will soak into the wood of the planking and bulkheads, and between the planks. It makes a very solid hull and the planks will never open up with gaps between the planks. At least it hasn't in hulls I built over 35 years ago. After the epoxy has hardened you can finish the hull with sanding.

Thanks for the references. I have followed your build. Your name caught my eye. I had a friend many years ago in grad school named Bob Garcia. Dr. Bob now.

Brewerpaul, You are lucky that you have the real thing to volunteer on! Where I live there are not many historical things to work on, and certainly no ships. We do have a pre-Civil War frontier fort, Fort Hoskins, that I have volunteered to help with, but that is a very slow project.

Seahawk, I remember reading about that method of controlling the fore course yard, presumably in Chapelle's The Baltimore Clipper. It would help control the yard as it was being raised or lowered while the ship was rolling. There has been a fair amount of discussion and speculation about the double main stays on schooners on the forum. The best came from someone experienced in sailing one of the existing ships. Right now I don't remember who or where this post is. The problem is that a stay that runs from the main top to the deck forward near the base of the fore mast, as is common on square riggers, will interfere with the swing of the fore sail (and fore sail boom if there is one) when the ship changes course. It is desirable to swing the sail out over the side to catch the wind, either running with the wind or when tacking into the wind. With a fixed main stay when the ship changed course it would be necessary to lift the fore sail and boom over the stay and that would be a slow process. It wouldn't be as much of a problem on ships that did not have a fore sail boom. The clew of the sail would have double sheets, one port and one starboard, and the sail could be pulled over the main stay with the appropriate sheet. I have also seen photos of ships with brails near the foot of the sail that could be hauled in to loosely furl the sail (no fore boom) close to the mast. These could be used to haul up the sail for lifting over a fixed main stay. One solution was to have two main stays, port and starboard. Each stay had a tackle (gun tackle or luff tackle) with the lower block hooked to a point on deck. The stay on the windward side was drawn taught to take the forces of the wind and ship's motion, while the lee side was slacked to allow freedom of motion of the fore sail (and boom). When the wind changed to the opposite side the stay on that side was drawn taught and the new leeward side stay was loosened. This was a much faster process that working around a fixed stay. Many of the drawings and plates in The Baltimore Clipper show this rig, dating back to 1800 or earlier. Several modern topsail schooners also have this rig. However, Lennarth Petersson's Rigging Period Fore-and-Aft Craft (page 80) shows a double fixed main stay anchored to bitts aft of the fore mast on the Experiment. His drawings were made (mostly) from a model of the Experiment in a Swedish museum. Another solution was to rig the main stay from the main top to the fore top. Then the fore stay took the load for both masts. In this case the fore gaff swung below the main stay. I have seen a few drawings showing this configuration. But the gaff peak halliard rigging would also have to be below the main stay and this would require the gaff to be some distance below the stay, resulting in smaller sail area.