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ClipperFan

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Everything posted by ClipperFan

  1. Rob, sorry about the Pete & repeat post, I thought the 1st one failed. It wasn't til later I saw both.
  2. Rob, at first I thought so too but if you look at Michael Mjelde's rear house blueprint (Clipper Ship Captain pg 175) it only shows 2 doors with state rooms occupying both outer corners. What supports this is that while both doors definitely have arches, the embossed area towards the corners are not.
  3. Rob, I agree with the logic of your evaluation, especially since there is a raised section that the rail is bolted to on the roof. What throws me off is the relation of rail height to width of the house below. The 30" rail seems to be taller and thus makes the 24' house seem to be off somehow. I'm going to experiment with 28" height to see how much of a difference it makes.
  4. Vladimir, great catch! You're right, it's subtle but definitely there. The base of the windows do indeed curve just so slightly parallel to the ship's deck. Which leads me to believe that so to will every other ornate element, since they would look out of place if they didn't follow suit. Another element that I'm still not settled on is the true height of the turned rails surrounding the house. Illustrated at 30" they look too tall. I find it hard to believe but they might actually be shorter. I've been toying with the idea of being 28" or even as short as 2'. Perhaps on a ship it was considered effective enough just to provide a barrier to determine the end of the house itself? It sounds crazy when compared to our 3' standard for all upper level decks in America today but we're looking back historically and these rails were definitely lower than 3'.
  5. Vladimir, When it comes to highlighting "big, big rectangle windows" you're going to be disappointed. Other than her two large approximately 6' skylights in her rear house, all other windows on Glory are on the small side. In a 45' space on the sides, it appears the few windows are tiny, about 1' wide each. That's deliberate, in order to minimize potential for water from heavy seas entering inside her dwelling areas. The same goes for doors. You'd think in a 24' house, doors would be at least 3' but from what I can tell, they were 2'.
  6. Rob, Of course you can! I've been creating these drawings specifically so you, Vladimir and anyone else who wants to, can recreate this Clipper with the most authenticity. I'm still working on a larger more detailed house and hope to have it done soon.
  7. Pat, thanks, I appreciate the compliment. It is a work of love to promote the most accurate reproduction of McKay's last Clipper.
  8. Rob, when I have a chance, I will gladly email you a pdf of the new Staples scan. Besides correcting copywrite date, already done, I also need to darken certain elements which are barely visible on prints. Mike relayed to me that he's still waiting for Ron Haug's response to clear proof that Glory's stern was definitely curvilinear and not round. I get the impression Ron might be a bit hard to convince(?)
  9. Rob & Vladimir, here's my preliminary sketch of the somewhat ornate front face of Glory's rear 'Carriage' house with her upper turned stanchion rails. MacLean's stats say this house was 45' long x 24' wide × 8' high. Pictures show the house had a roughly 3' overhang. Contrary to expectations, the turned stanchions are not strictly verticle, nor all evenly spaced. It appears the 3 central stanchions were 2 & 1/2' apart, the remaining 6 on either side were 2 & 3/4' apart and the last 2 were 1 & 1/2 feet apart, for a total of 12 stanchions in all. The 4 windows appear to be 1 & 1/2' wide and both door seem to be sliding, not pivoting and are only 2' wide each. The left side slid out towards the left (as can be seen in this photo. I would expect the opposite door would slide out to the right. At the base is a double molding, the lowest appears to be painted blue, the upper would most likely be white, being a raised surface. All recessed areas would have been pearl and highlights white. The left side of my sketch is inaccurate, done before I realized how truly narrow the windows and doors really were. So to make things easier, I cropped the right side & flipped it to create a corresponding identical left one.
  10. Rob, that's pretty tough for your poor wife. Give her my condolences for her difficult loss. When your last living relative passes, there's a peculiar loneliness that's attached to it.... By the way, I heard back from Mike after he received my Glory scan. He's asked for some prints so that he can send one to Ron Haug. This could get to be real interesting.....
  11. Vladimir, again, just like Rob, it's uncanny how much your miniature ship matches scenes of the actual vessel herself. Simply beautiful. Beautifully done work!
  12. Vladimir, what you've illustrated would be correct, as far as I can tell. All flat surfaces would have been pearl and all raised ones would have been white. There had to be enough of a difference in contrast to justify the added investment. Donald McKay's Clippers and even his Packets were all renowned for their top of the line quality, both of craftsmanship and ship's fittings. After all, Donald McKay was the main American contributor to the British James Baines Line, supplying 4 principal vessels to his franchise. Before British Regulars embarked to India to suppress a revolt, Queen Victoria paid a Royal visit to the vessels "James Baines" and "Champion of the Seas." She's known to have marveled that the British Empire had such magnificent vessels.
  13. Rob, always there to help! Actually these "pearls" are very restful shades. On another matter, does anyone know if there's a way to upload Adobe pdf files? My 1:96 scale ship's lines of Glory are done. Staples scanned them & emailed me a copy but it's on a pdf file. They made print outs. That's when I realized I mistakenly put the date as 8/20/28. Since then I've corrected it to 8/28/21 but it has to be rescanned to get that corrected date.
  14. Vladimir, one last sample, Rust-o-Leum pale white pearl. You can see they all tend towards a white with hazel & a hint of pink undertones.
  15. Vladimir, from PPG's interior paint website: mother of pear is a pale shaded, sunny white paint color with hazel undertone. Here's their sample:
  16. Vladimir, frames ARE futtocks, there's no difference. To keep it simple, raised surfaces, ie inner moldings and frames are white, recessed panels on the ship's sides (bulwarks) & houses are pearl. Incidentally "pearl" is not grey nor buff as some Ships had grey (or gray) & buff interiors and are described as such. If you look up "mother of pearl" you'll get a better idea of pearl. To me it's kind of an elegant mixture of very light pinkish tan. The color blue Rob has for the waterways would go well with that, almost a wedgewood blue but a little darker. I'd play around with some shades to see how it looks before painting your model.
  17. Vladimir, frames or futtocks would have been painted white (relieved with white) to me the pearl shade would be all the flat surfaces not including blue waterways.
  18. Vladimir a while ago I was curious as to exactly what "pearl" color would have looked like in the 1850s & 60s. A Google search for that era pearl resulted in this shade which I think is a good match.
  19. Vladimir, in nautical terms "brightwork" literally means naturally finished wood. Of course, it would actually be varnished too, in order to protect it against the elements. My guess is it would most likely be mahogany too. Since MacLean didn't distinguish between poop deck or rear house surrounding turned rails, I'd suspect all rails were left natural varnished. From my favorite painting by Samuel Walters the top of the rear house railing is white while the turned rails are brown. What's even more confusing is the ship's actual appearance from her 1869 fitting out in East Boston it looks like all turned rails including poop rails and rear house all seem to be painted white, since you can see the contrasting light shade versus the men standing behind them. Since that's clear photographic evidence I would go with that. MacLean's descriptions, I suspect were given to him by the Shipyard and the photos apparently don't match.
  20. Vladimir, I love how these images of your model reflect scenes of the real vessel. Each time I see these uncanny resemblances it reinforces that we really got our homework done with a very high degree of accuracy. Well done, Vlad!
  21. Rob, my condolences on your loss. Funerals are such powerfully emotional events. When you live a great distance from family, sometimes the only times you get together is either Weddings or Funerals...
  22. Rob, here's the specs on two other McKay Clippers: 1851 "Flying Fish" All masts rake alike: 1 & 1/4" to 1' 1852 "Sovereign of the Seas" Fore: 6/8ths" to 1' Main: 7/8ths" to 1' Mizzen: 1&1/8th" to 1' It's very hard to read in Mike's 2nd book "Clipper Ship Captain" it almost looks like 96 degrees but from the near verticle pitch of all 3 masts it's got to be 98 degrees, meaning 2 degrees off verticle, since 4 degrees would be more of a rake. Incidentally "Sovereign of the Seas" registered 2,421 tons. She's described as being 11'8" 'through the backbone.' While no such specifics were given for "GLORY of the SEAS" using the same accounting method as ascribed to "Stag Hound" I was able to come up with a similar figure, very close to the Sovereign's. This is important to know for anyone planning to step Glory's masts, since they're obviously mounted above the backbone, which consisted of much more than the 29" keel and shoe alone.
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