Dr PR

I have seen kits that have masts too long (one of the earliest kits I built had masts far too tall). They look out of proportion, and that provoked Wolfram zu Mondfeld (Historic Ship Models) to make some pretty pointed criticisms of these overly tall models! You mention Anderson's book - are you using his Seventeenth Century Rigging book? He did a lot of research on these vessels so I would use his formulas if you can't find a more authoritative source. There are a few galleon builds on the forum, and these fellows may have more information about the masts.

One thing to consider is how small is the smallest hole you want to drill? Mills and drill presses all have some degree of runout (wobble) that limits the precision. If a mill or drill press has too much runout it will break the smallest drill bits. Does the literature for a product tell how much runout it has? If not, it probably has mediocre performance, and might not be suitable for very small drill bits. The main difference between a milling machine and a drill press is in the bearings on the spindle. The bearings in drill presses are designed for vertical (up/down) drilling only - not for lateral (horizontal motion) pressure. Milling machines have bearings designed to allow mill bits to cut through material moving horizontally. You can use milling bits in a drill press, but it will cause excessive wear on the bearings (more wobble, less precision) if you try to mill horizontally. Milling machines may have larger (more powerful) motors because milling takes more power than drilling. And they always have X/Y tables that can be moved with some degree of precision (smaller backlash). They may also have a digital readout (DRO) that allows you to position your work with good precision. You can add an X/Y table to some drill presses.

" ... large radius edge bend ..." Are you talking about bending the edges of a strip to create a "U" or "L" cross section so it fits over the top and side(s) of the railing? Or are you talking about bending a flat strip by curving it across the wide dimension, as it would be if it was only on top of a curved railing? What is the thickness of the brass? What is the radius of the desired bend?

Oops! Wrong again! I thought there was nothing more to do on the hull until the wood for the stern frame arrived. But I forgot about the bronze stem chafing plate and those wooden lining boards on the hull to protect it from anchors, pigs and such. The stem chafing piece is shown in green. I will make it from thin brass sheet. I have several thicknesses in stock, but I think I'll use some 0.005 inch (0.127 mm) pieces in my scrap box. It is pretty easy to work with. The lining boards were a problem. They are not mentioned in the blueprints, so I guess they were added later after wear was appearing on the hull planks. Fortunately I have quite a few photos of the USS Cape MSI-2 and I can see where the linings were located. There was a lot more than I originally thought. The lining planks are shown in red in the drawing above. Note: there seem to be some differences from the linings visible in USS Cove MSI-1 photos. At the bow the linings extended down to the keel - this is evident in the photos Austin Cox sent of the current Cape on blocks. The anchor could bang against the hull here as it was being lowered and raised. From photos of the Cape afloat I can only see the other linings extending down to the boot topping. I am guessing the linings didn't extend much lower because the hull sides curve under at these places and the pigs (floats) wouldn't go very deep. The kites and acoustic sounder could be lowered deeper but would be hanging out over the side. The entire hull did have a thin third outer planking of red oak below the water line and this would provide some protection. I counted the planks in several photos, especially the bow photos, and determined them to be about 4 inches (104 mm) wide. That would be 0.085 inches (2.16 mm) at 1:48 scale. The closest commercially available wood is 3/32 inch (0.094 inch or 2.38 mm) wide. Fortunately, I just ordered 28 feet (8.5 meters) of 3/32 x 1/32 inch boxwood strips. I will need a few feet for trim on the deck house, and the rest was just to replenish stock. Looks like I will have enough for the lining planks! And while looking for drawings of the chafing piece and linings I found one showing 12" x 6" x 1 1/4" (304.8 x 152.4 x 31.75 mm) zinc bars at places on the hull. I knew about the zincs on the stern frame and rudder. But there are two zincs on the "plow" for the engine and fire water intakes! A bit more detail to add.

SOmetimes a hole is too small for two strands of rope/thread, and a needle threader won't work. In this case just put some glue on the end of the rope/thread and let it dry. Then clip a little bit off the end at an angle. Now the rope/thread will be stiff enough to go through the hole. If the block or deadeye has been painted you may need to open the holes with a tiny drill bit.

While many of my fellow Americans are having nachos and beer while watching dumjoks chase rubber balls (which I find boring) on New Years Day I have been working on the fiddly bits on the hull while waiting for some boxwood to arrive to make the stern frame around the propeller and rudder. Older wooden sailing ships rarely had deliberate openings in the hulls below the waterline, so there is nothing there to model. But steam and diesel powered vessels have a variety of hull openings, or seachests, that do give us something to model. The original MSI hull had 13 openings (Austin Cox told me he added another for new accommodations). Some were intakes for taking in sea water and the others were various overboard discharges. The intakes for engine cooling water and fire pumps are the most interesting. The openings were surrounded by 3 5/8 inch (92 mm) thick wooden "plows" that were tapered fore and aft to facilitate water flow. An odd thing about these is that they were beveled around the edges with the widest dimensions on the surface away from the hull planking, and not mating to the planking. They were "upside down" trapezoids with the narrow side against the hull plating (see Section "3-BI" above). I'm sure there was some reason for this, but it just seems odd to me. Here is how I made these seachests (see photo below). The plows should be 0.078 inch (1.98 mm) thick at 1:48 scale. I don't have any stock that thick (but some a lot thicker) so they were made of 1/16 inch (1.59 mm) thick basswood with 1/32 inch 0.79 mm) thick plywood glued to the back side. That comes out to 0.94 inch (2.38 mm) thick, so I will have to sand them down a bit. The plywood serves a double purpose. The smaller plow has a large hole for the seachest grating that comes close to the sides. While trying to cut out the opening the basswood piece broke. But with the plywood glued to the back the pieces came together again and I was able to finish the opening. The gratings were cut from very fine HO scale (1:87) brass vent screens for the sides of a GMC F3 diesel engine that I just happened to have in my scrap box. As you can see from the blueprint the grating actually had a series of long, narrow parallel openings, but at 1:48 they would be difficult to create with photo etch. The grating was spot soldered to the end of a 9/32 inch (7.14 mm) outside diameter brass tube ring, and that was soldered into a short piece of 5/16 inch (7.94 mm) OD brass tube. These assemblies were pressed into the holes in the wood. I drilled small holes into the hull about equal to the scale inside diameter of the piping in the original ships, and then used a counter sink bit to make the openings conical, as shown in the blueprints. After the plows were glued in place on the hull I painted the inside if the recess black, and then glued the grating assemblies into the holes in the plows. I used Duco Cement because I have found it adheres to both wood and metal. If you look closely you will see that I did not bevel the edges of the plows undercut as shown in the blueprints. I think this would make the exposed edges of the basswood vulnerable to damage. And in most circumstances these seachests won't even be visible! Why ask for trouble? The remaining 10 seachests were ordinary pipes with flanges attached to the outside of the hull planking. There were six different sizes on the ships, but I don't have a wide enough variety of brass tubing to make them all. Using commercial "telescoping" brass tubing I could make four sizes that are close to scale to the originals. For some I soldered two concentric rings around the end of the center tube to make wide flanges, and some had just one ring for narrower flanges. These were then turned in an electric drill and ground down with files to a flange thickness of about 0.020 - 0.023 inches (0.51 - 0.58 mm). Some of this tubing has been in my junk box for decades and is heavily oxidized and scratched. However, this doesn't matter because only the outer face of the flange will be visible after the seachests are in place. Here are some photos of these seachests mounted in the hull. There is a bit of dust in the openings - I will need to clear that before the hull is painted. But before that the flanges will be filed/sanded a bit thinner to a scale thickness of 1/2 inch (12.7 mm), or 0.01 inch (0.26 mm) at 1:48. All of the seachests will be painted when I get around to that. That is about all of the hull detail below the main deck except for the stern frame. I won't have the boxwood for that for a week or two. So I guess now I will have to guzzle beer and munch nachos while watching a movie. And I will have to start planning the deck house and all of the minesweeping gear that crowds the after deck.

Keith, Very, very nice! Your secret technique (even unknown to you) with the gold paint produced an interesting "hammered" effect. The result is beautiful! Happy New Year!

Tom, I'm not sure we were really looking for a helicopter. That is just something I overheard in the preparations for getting underway. It may be that the only person onboard who really knew what we were looking for was the fellow in the sonar shack. The whole episode was mysterious. The original message just said to get underway immediately, but didn't say where we were going or why. "Men, I want you to leave immediately!" The CO did get verbal orders to go look for something. No one told me what we were looking for, but I was told that the sonar shack guy would tell us if we found something. Everything about the sonar was classified. And we couldn't be seen searching in daylight (at night we looked like just another fishing boat's navigation lights). Weird! But whatever we were looking for we didn't find.

What helicopter?

Tom, My wife started early (18) in a previous marriage. And our oldest son married a slightly older woman with two young kids. All together that makes for several generations of rug rats. I have been making bits and pieces as I go along, ahead of when they will be installed. The plankshears and nibbing strakes are some of these pieces. Here is a photo. The plankshears are the wider outboard pieces and the nibbing strakes are the inner parts. The straight piece in the center is the stern plankshear. I didn't want to try to bend a 0.31 inch (7.9 mm) wide wood strip across the wide dimension so these pieces were all cut from a large 1/16 inch (1.59 mm) thick sheet of basswood. And that brings us to the latest work. I needed the stern plankshear piece to finish the transom. Mr. Cox sent the photo (left above) that shows the transom of the current Cape. The top of the vertical "guard" pieces end below deck level, and the bottoms merge into a horizontal member at the bottom of the transom. But the original blueprints (right above) are quite different. Most of the guard pieces extend up to the stern planksheer piece, and all but the outermost two on each side extend down to the bottom of the hull. So there have been a few changes to the vessel since it was originally constructed. I want to model the ship as it originally was - as a minesweeper - so I will follow the blueprints. I originally thought I would make the stern like the current vessel so I extended the planks and built up the piece all around the edges of the transom (left above). However, when I finally figured out how the blueprints showed it I trimmed back the edge part to extend only to the second vertical piece from the outer edge of the transom (right above). The other vertical pieces were glued in place (below) as shown on the blueprints. The vertical guard pieces protected the transom when we were streaming minesweeping gear and hauling it back in. The heavy pigs (floats), otters (pull the sweep cable down below the pigs) and kites (pull the cable down at the ship's stern) were suspended from derricks while rigging the gear and could swing around wildly in heavy seas, banging against the hull. I will describe this gear in detail when I get to that part of the build. And this brings us to another episode of DrPR's Story Time Once upon a time on a slow day when nothing much was happening the Cape's Captain, Executive Officer and I (Ensign Fuzz) went over to the Long Beach Naval Station's Officer's Club for lunch. Afterward the CO and XO went to the Base Exchange while I wandered back to the Cape. When I got to Pier 9 I saw a large crane on the pier beside the ship. It was lifting the stern minesweeping roller chocks from the ship. Our Chief Bosun's Mate (senior enlisted on board) was on the pier. "What's going on?" I asked. He handed me a piece of paper with orders to get underway IMMEDIATELY as soon as the sonar was ready! Sonar? The Cape didn't have a sonar - well, normally, that is. But the Bosun explained that occasionally we would take aboard an experimental mine hunting sonar for testing. That was news to me! Here is a photo of the SQS-16 sonar installed on the Cape's stern, along with the control shack just forward of it. The sonar is the spherical thing with something sticking out of the bottom. Unlike most sonars up to that time, the SQS-16 didn't just send out a "ping" and measure the time for the return echo to determine distance. This thing used a very high frequency acoustic scanning "beam" to create a picture on a video screen. The resolution was good enough to see nuts, bolts and other small features on the objects being viewed. It was bleeding edge stuff, and that is why it was classified SECRET. You can also see that the vertical guard pieces on the transom were actually installed as the blueprint shows, and details of the stern ends of the horizontal guard rails. The white things on either side at the stern are the ordinary minesweeping otters and kites, and you can see one of the pigs on the starboard side aft. If you look closely you can also see some of the additional horizontal "lining" planks added to the exterior of the hull planking to protect the hull while the pigs were being lowered and hoisted over the side. Well, we weren't going anywhere - orders or not - until the Captain returned. Fred would have been really POd if I left without him! After a while he and the XO came walking up the pier. Imagine his surprise to find the lines all singled up, the engines running and the gang plank ready to be hauled in! So off we went! But where were we going? This reminds me of a scene from the movie Le Roi de Coeur (The King of Hearts) where the WWI Scottish Colonel asked for three volunteers. When they arrived he said "Men, I want you to leave immediately!" "Sir!" they replied, saluting. And then they all ran away. "Stop!" the Colonel shouted. "Where the devil do you think you are going?" "No idea, sir!" came the reply. The CO made a call to the Squadron headquarters and learned we were supposed to motor down the coast to San Diego and hunt for something in the waters off Point Loma. The Captain said it was a downed helicopter, and there was something aboard they wanted to recover. Then after a quick call to his wife to say he wouldn't be home for dinner we cruised out of Los Angeles harbor and headed south. It was about 1600 (4 PM) before we actually got under way and well after dark when we got to San Diego. We received the coordinates of two rectangular areas we were supposed to search where the "helo" might have gone down. The first was just a mile or two off the beach at La Jolla, just north of Point Loma. Our search pattern was just a series of parallel courses a few miles long. At the end of each leg we did a 180 degree turn and proceeded back parallel to the previous leg. Simple, right? So simple that after a while the CO took to his bunk leaving Ensign Fuzz to complete the search area. I had only conned (driven) the ship a few times, and that was just around Catalina Island or such while the crew fished. This was different, because we had to proceed in straight lines proscribed distances off shore. Every couple of minutes I used the ships' surface search radar to get distances to shore, and visual triangulations to points ashore to locate our position. The positions were plotted on a chart so I could estimate the timing of our next turn. But the fact that we had to conduct the search at night complicated the visual sightings - I had to locate certain reference lights that I was not familiar with against the background lights of a large city! But I figured this out and we were going along smoothly, except for two major problems. First, the sonar sphere was dangling directly off the stern in the propeller wash. If we went too fast the sonar cable would twist and turn, making it impossible to get a picture and determine the bearing to anything spotted on the sea floor. And remember, the USS Cape was about as maneuverable as the Rock of Gibraltar at low speeds. We barely had steerageway (fast enough for the rudder to work). The second problem was the Black Current (Kuroshiro or Japan Current) that flows from north to south down the Pacific Coast of North America. It streams close to shore at Point Loma, right where our search area was. Even with our bow turned into the current we moved backwards! Add to this that there were kelp beds inshore that would tangle and foul the sonar that I had to avoid. It was nearly impossible to steer a straight course (especially for a novice like me)! Instead of a set of nice parallel course lines on the chart there was a scribble of zig zag lines, but I did cover that search area thoroughly! There was no helicopter (or anything else of interest) there!! I was proud of myself for having accomplished the assigned task. The CO came back to the bridge about dawn and asked if we had finished the search areas. Areas? All I knew about was the one. But apparently he had expected me to search both areas before dawn. He was upset! When I asked what the problem was - we could still search the other area - It seems we weren't supposed to be seen searching the areas in daylight. Why? Your guess is as good as mine! It was another McHales Navy moment. Happy New Year!

Richard, I too was surprised to find the planksheer boards wider forward of frame 51 than they were aft. I am guessing that the wider planksheer forward was to accommodate the bulwark supports and fastener hardware up forward. There is no bulwark back aft. Another surprise was the nibbing strake inboard of the planksheer that is the same width from bow to stern. The deck planks are not nibbed into the wider planksheer but into this separate nibbing strake. And to add to the fun the forward and aft planksheers are scarfed together along with the nibbing strakes to create a pretty gentle transition at frame 51. I still haven't figured out exactly how this will work.

See reply #8.

I was trying to use the shellac to shape the rope. Shellac is an alcohol solution. Fiebing leather dye is alcohol based. If the alcohol in the shellac wicked down the ropes to the blocks the dye bled into the ropes, discoloring them. I also had problems with the light brown stain on the wooden blocks. The end grain is more porous that the side grain, so the ends of the blocks soaked up the stain and are almost black. The sides stained OK on the smaller blocks, but the sides of the larger blocks were splotchy. I think this was caused by glue on the wood from the sheeve pins in the multi-part Syren blocks. All in all, I think I would have gotten MUCH better results with just painting the blocks.

Happy holidays to you all!

White school glue (Elmer's Glue-All) dries totally invisible, so it might be good for gluing your rope coils to the deck. It does take a while to set. Many people dilute it 1:1 with water to thin it so it flows better.

John, Must have been really important to interfere with ship modelling. Happy holidays!

vossiewulf, The "jib inhaul/outhaul/halliard ring thingy" is called a "traveller." There are some other things called travellers, most (all?) involving metal rings that slide along some kind of boom or rod and provide a place for tackle and rigging to attach to - like the ring that the boom sheet block will attach to on the "horse" (horizontal metal bar) at the stern of your model. You must have great patience to be manually serving ropes with that very tiny thread! Your bock holder is a nifty idea. I'll have to make one for myself when I get back into rigging. Have a happy holidays!

What? No pictures of Grandma and Grandpa on the wall? Very nice Keith. I'm sure it will see a lot of playtime!

The guards are now shaped to the proper angles. I am researching sea chests and a few other small details for the hull before going on to the last major piece - the stern frame that holds the propeller and rudder. I haven't decided what material to make if from. I could carve it out of Castello boxwood. That would be easier than cutting if from a brass or aluminum bar. I am continuing to apply thin layers of acrylic sealer and then sand the hull smooth with fine grit sandpaper. I don't plan to apply paint until after the stern frame is installed and all the other hull details are finished. There will be a pause in construction while I spend some time with kids, grandkids and great grandkids and enjoy Christmas.

Wealck, Thanks. I have some rasps but they are far too aggressive for finish work. The riffler files would come in handy for concave surfaces.

Adrian, I have used single edge razor blades to scrape wooden decks on earlier models. But not until I started my current MSI model did it occur to me to use scrapers (and files) to do fine shaping on concave parts of hulls. I have spent a lot of time shaping this latest hull and I can find no visible or tangible surface irregularities, especially in the most convex parts that are hard to shape with sanding blocks. Of course the truth will come out when I apply the first coat of opaque primer or paint!

Thermal effects are important, and the larger the model the greater the effect. A fellow in Australia made a 1:72 R/C model of an aircraft carrier that was about 4 meters (4 yards) long. He made the hull framing and structure out of wood and the decks and hull sides were styrene. Wood has a low coefficient of thermal expansion (how much a material expands with temperature changes) and styrene and other plastics have relatively high coefficient. The decks were painted dark gray, and when the model was out in the sun the plastic warmed up - especially the flight deck - and expanded. With a 20 degree Celsius change 4 meters of styrene will expand about 5 mm (1/4 inch). Unfortunately the flight deck was anchored well to the wooden frame at the bow and stern so the plastic could not get longer. Instead the deck bowed up seriously, and the side plating pulled loose. In just a few minutes months of work were wrecked! You would think that a 3D printed model would not have any problems since the entire structure is made of the same plastic material and should all expand/contract evenly. However a R/C model will have the lower part of the hull in cool water and the upper parts will be exposed to sunlight and heated - especially if the decks are painted dark gray. At some model length this has to be taken into consideration or the hull will "hog" (become banana shaped) if the top expands faster than the bottom. The stresses might cause it to break apart. This is a consideration for real ships. In theory the steel hull of the 610 foot (186 meter) cruiser I was on could vary in length about 5 inches (127 mm) between arctic and equatorial waters. Actually it would be a bit less than that because the hull interior was heated in cooler areas and cooled in warm waters.

Very nice!

Valeriy, I hope your customer will be satisfied with this! It certainly is a beautiful model.

I often see comments about using sandpaper to smooth wood hull and deck planking. Sometimes files are used to shape pieces for deck furniture and such. Occasionally someone will mention scrapers, but not much more is said about them. But files and scrapers can be very useful for shaping hulls, especially on the concave (inward curving) surfaces where flat sanding blocks are of limited usefulness. Here are four tools I find indispensable for putting the finishing touches on the surfaces of a planked hull. I bought the top two blades and the handle decades ago in a set, along with several more common blade shapes. I could see how the curved knife blade could be useful for cutting things, but I had no idea how the loop blade should be used. The two files are fairly common shapes. The top one has one flat side and the other side is curved, forming a flattened "D" shape. I could see how it would be useful for cutting "U" shaped grooves in pieces. The flat rectangular file is useful for just grinding away material, as is the flat side of the other file. But I have learned there are other ways to use these tools. First consider that curved file. You can use the curved side to shape concave surfaces with an ordinary back and forth motion along the length of the file. But this can cut grooves into the wood if you are not careful. The long curved edge of the file can also be used to cut much gentler curves more closely matching the curvature of the hull. Move the file at an angle to the length of the file, holding the edge in contact with the wood. By rotating the file around its axis you can change the curvature where the cutting edge contacts the wood to match subtle changes in the curvature of the hull. If you use the file flat side down, and rotate it a bit, you can change the cutting angle from straight (flat against the wood) to the full curvature of the file edge. The tip can be very useful for removing small imperfections. Again, move the file from side to side, holding the edge of the tip against the surface. You can see in the picture where the hull surface has an "S" curvature where it goes from a convex shape around the hull side through a concave curve to meet the keel and deadwood near the stern of the boat. You can use curved sanding blocks in these concave areas, but the curved files are better suited for working in these tight varying radius curves with neighboring surfaces. OK. Now what about the scrapers? You may have seen posts about the very specialized (and expensive) scrapers used by luthiers (stringed instrument makers) and furniture makers. These often have specially prepared curved cutting edges to allow the same curves to be repeated over and over. But just about any reasonably sharp knife blade can serve as a scraper. First of all, scrapers usually produce a cleaner surface with less raised wood fibers and none of the parallel scratches that sandpaper leaves in the wood. And the scraper blade can work in tight spaces where a sanding block isn't suitable. A straight or square-ended blade (like a single edge razor blade) is very good for smoothing deck planking. A curved blade is useful as a scraper on concave surfaces. As shown here, hold the blade perpendicular to the surface and drag it sideways over the wood. The blade will scrape material from the high spots only, bringing them down to the level of lower areas. This is especially useful where you have planks of varying thicknesses, or plank edges that rise above the surrounding planks. I finally figured out how to use this strange cutting loop. By holding the cutting edge at an angle to the surface and dragging along it will make a shallow "U" shaped cut. The greater the angle of the blade to the surface the shallower and broader will be the cut. But you must use only slight pressure so the blade doesn't cut deep into the wood! Sand paper and sanding blocks sometimes just remove the edges of raised planks, leaving the surface rippled with smooth surface between higher and lower planks. This loop scraper will remove the "crown" of the higher plank. You can also drag it at an angle to the plank length to remove small bits at the highest points. I was surprised at how useful this tool is for removing very small amounts of wood in small areas. The trick to getting a very smooth hull surface in curved areas is to hold the surface at an angle to a bright light so low spots show up as slight shadows. I use these files and scrapers to remove material from the high places surrounding slight depressions until the shadows disappear. An even more sensitive way to detect slight imperfections in the surface is to drag your finger back and forth over the wood. You may be surprised that you can feel imperfections that don't appear as shadows. And this is the way to detect slight irregularities in the curvature that are never visible. In these cases you must remove only very tiny amounts of wood while smoothing the surface. Cut a bit, feel a bit, and continue until you cannot detect anything amiss. After you have used the files and scrapers to get the "perfect" surface it is best to go over it with very fine sandpaper or steel wool to remove any tiny scratches. CAUTION: Be careful to avoid repeated shaping in a single spot (with files, scrapers or sandpaper) until you have removed all of the wood and make a hole in the planking. If you have a deep dent or plank edges that rise very high it might be best to add material to the low spots before you start removing the highest parts. I sometimes glue thin wood shavings (made with a plane) into low spots and sand them down flush with the surrounding areas before starting the final shaping.