Dr PR

Glad I can help. I certainly am getting a lot of good ideas from others on this forum!

Tony, Thank you very much! Phil

I have been working on the channels and chain plates, and the gun port lids/doors. Note: The pinrails should be installed before the channels. See post #166. The channels were fairly straight forward. They were fitted to the curvature of the hull and pinned with short brass nails into the bulwark supports. I examined drawings for 19 Baltimore schooners and revenue cutters and determined the spacings for shrouds at the deadeyes relative to length between perpendiculars. Deadeye spacing is related to mast height, and that is related to hull length. I had no data for mast heights so I used the hull length as a reference. For a 68 foot between perps ship the forward deadeyes were about 2 feet apart and the rear deadeyes averaged about 2 feet 2 inches. At 1:48 this is 0.5 inch for the four forward shrouds. For the three aft shrouds I placed the forward two at 0.5 inch and the spacing between the aft two at 0.6 inches. There will be ratlines between three of the forward shrouds and two of the aft shrouds, all spaced at two scale feet at the bottom. The blue painter's tape marks the waterline. Chainplate length was determined by the channel placement and the distance to the waterline. The deadeyes supplied with the kit were pretty good. I used the CAD program to work out the spacing and lengths of parts. I used 0.0185" brass wire to create the chain plates. Mondfeld's Historic Ship Models was my guide for the design of the chain plates. The only problem I had making them is that very small parts like these have an annoying habit of being someplace else other than where you expect them to be. I spent a fair amount of time retrieving them from the floor below my work table. I will attach them to the hull after it has been painted, The chain plates and deadeyes will be painted black - whenever the rains stop and we get some sunny dry weather!!! The gun port lids/doors were made of two pieces. The outer door was cut and shaped to fit in the port opening, resting against the rebate inside the port opening. Then the lids were sanded down to contour with the hull sides. A separate 0.040 inch piece was cut to fit into the port opening and then glued to the inside surface of the door lid. The doors fit snugly into the openings. The hinges for the gun port doors were a bit of a problem. Because the ports were open up to the top rail there was nothing on the hull planking to attach the hinges to. I had to attach them to the top rail - but how? I could have faked it and just glued the doors in the open or closed position, but I wanted working hinges. Eventually I came up with a plan. The hinges were made of three pieces of 1/16 inch OD brass tubing and a piece of 1/32 inch brass wire. Two 1/16 inch pieces of brass tube were soldered to the ends of a 0.525 inch long piece of brass wire, with a 0.225 inch piece of tubing in the middle. Two 0.050 inch wide pieces of 0.005 inch thick brass strip made the hinge straps. These were formed around a 1/32 inch drill bit and then the short end of the strip was tinned with solder. After these were placed around the hinge pins the short tinned end was reheated to solder it to the longer end of the strap. The cap rail is 1/16 inch thick. The 1/16inch diameter hinge tube is fitted into a recess carved into the edge of the rail, with the hinge straps glued to the gun port doors. For now the hinges are just fitted and not glued into place. First I need to paint the stripe between the top rail and the rub rail below the gun ports. I will fill the gaps around the hinges with Squadron white putty and sand everything smooth. Then the top rail, hinges and port doors will be painted black. I suppose the hinge straps should have bolts fastening them to the doors, but the smallest nails (7 mm) in my stock have 0.055 inch diameter heads - a bit wider than the 0.050 inch straps. I don't want to have to file down dozens of these tiny pieces. I'll look around to see if I can find pins/nails with 0.032 inch diameter heads, but I may have to be satisfied with no bolts in the straps. Personally, I think this hinge arrangement is a bit hokey, but it works. Unfortunately, 35 years ago when I built the hull I didn't plan ahead for the heights of the guns in carriages, size of the gun port openings and method of hinging the gun port lids. But, as I have said, this is a learning experience to prepare for building more accurate models. I am having fun learning about revenue cutters and solving problems building the model. EDIT: After gluing the hinges into cuts in the top rail I think it would be easier to install the hinges and fill the gaps with putty before gluing the hinge straps to the gun port covers. After the hinge glue was firmly set it would be easy to glue the straps to the port covers. Then the cover could be swung out and painted. EDIT: I have been studying how gun ports were arranged and operated on different ships in the early 1800s. I doubt that any real ship had gun port lids like I have modeled here. More likely the port lids would have been two parts. The top half would have been latched in place when the port was closed, and then lifted out and brought inboard when the port was opened. The lower half might have been hinged to swing down. The lids may or may not have had a circular opening in the center of the port to allow the gun barrel to stick out, with the lids closed around it.

I have been working on the hull details to get it ready for painting. We have had some nice days lately, but I have spent most of them bike riding, hiking and picnicking. February was unusually rainy and cold so I had a bad case of cabin fever! However, I did get a chance to paint some of the deck fittings. The new work included cutting gun ports, adding the waterways and placing scuppers. The picture above shows the gun placements I decided upon. These positions allow for ample recoil without striking deck fittings, and there is no carriage gun aligned with the pivot gun. There are four ports along the sides and two stern ports. When I paint the hull the band below the top rail will be white and gun ports will be black. In addition to the four actual ports there will be another six false ports - just painted black rectangles the size of the real gun port lids. These photos show details of the gun port framing and scupper placement. The ports are lined to form a rebate for the port lids and the lower cill serves as the bumper for the gun carriage. There is no upper cill because the bulwarks are so low the top rail just clears the gun barrels when the guns are run out, as explained in an earlier post. The scuppers were a source of frustration. I screwed up royally. First, placing the cart before the horse, I glued the trim strip onto the hull at a distance below the top rail that "looked right" according to the kit plans. But when I drilled the holes for the scuppers the trim strip was higher than the edge of the deck, causing the scuppers to angle upward from inboard to outboard. That was bass-ackwards! Furthermore, I drilled 1/8" holes - 6 inches at 1:48 scale, and then realized that this looked too large (4 inch would have been better). The solution was to place a short piece of 1/8 inch diameter brass tube in the openings to get smaller diameter holes. But before doing that I pried the trim strip away from the hull and cut the scupper openings to angle downward through the waterways and overboard. All this required some careful drilling, filing and trimming with a 1/8 inch end mill bit to countersink the brass tubing so the bottom of the opening was at deck level. A 0.040 inch thick 1/4 inch square backing plate fit around the outer end of the tube. Fortunately, after the holes were elongated this piece covered the entire hole on the outside of the hull. On the inside the elongated hole above the brass tube was filled with Squadron white putty. You can see quite a few white putty patches in the pictures. Anywhere the fit between pieces is not perfect I rub in some putty. Finally, the 1/4 inch square backing plate was trimmed tangent to the bottom side of the brass tubing, and the trim strip was glued back in place below the scupper tubes. Well, this build was intended to be a learning exercise, so I guess I am learning things not to do next time! This picture shows the 6 pounder carriage guns and gun ports, and also shows how the pivot gun is mounted high to clear the bulwarks. When the pivot gun is run out port or starboard to the full limit of the slide, the end of the barrel is about 1 1/2 scale feet inboard the cap rail and about 1 1/2 feet above it. The blast from the gun would clear the rail without damaging it. Here are some pictures showing the deck details. The stern pictures show possible locations for the 6 pounder guns at the side and stern ports. The arrangement shown here would never have been used, but a gun could be hauled aft and fired outboard to get a four gun broadside. Or guns could be fired through the stern ports during a chase. In either case the quarter deck would be a bit crowded, especially with the rigging for the tiller and the main boom. The next step is to add the channels for standing rigging (The pinrails should be installed before the channels. See post #166). I saved that for last so they wouldn't be damaged with all the handling necessary to cut the gun ports and scuppers. Then everything will be painted with sanding sealer and any gaps sealed with putty. After that paint colors will be applied. I still haven't made up my mind what color the inside of the bulwarks will be. The gun carriages will be brown. I might even paint the area on the exterior between the cap rail and trim strip yellow, but I think that may have gone out of fashion by 1815, in favor of white.

Castos, The "rabbet" is a groove in the keel that the first plank (garboard strake) fits into. It looks to me that the 45 degree angles that you are referring to are the rabbet. Before going too far you must be certain that the vertical and horizontal lines are absolutely perpendicular. Just rotating to eliminate the "list" will not do this. If these lines are not "square" the hull will be warped. Are you planning to use the hull cross-sections to make a 3D model of the hull? Or do you plan to just cut out the bulkheads from your drawings? I would caution you that no matter how carefully you draw the hull lines they almost certainly will be a bit out of true. Some will be slightly "fat" and others "skinny." The result will be a wavy surface on a planked hull model. In some cases you can correct this by sanding down the high spots, but you risk sanding all the way through the planks. If you create a 3D CAD model of the hull using your section lines you can examine the rendered hull by rotating the view and changing the lighting angle. Imperfections will appear as a wavy surface. An even better way is to create horizontal (waterline) contours on the hull - just the lines of intersection between a horizontal plane and the hull surface at different elevations. Then hide the hull and examine the intersect lines by looking at them length wise (bow to stern, etc.). If any of the sections are too wide or too narrow it will cause the waterlines to be wavy instead of being smooth curves from bow to stern. Find the erroneous sections and correct the width. Create new waterlines and repeat the process until all are nice smooth curves. Then you will have a correct set of hull sections. This can be a time consuming process, but the result will be a good set of hull section lines that will produce a smoothly curved hull surface without ripples or low spots.

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