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Something just caught my eye on the Philidelphia. This post 'does' concern that boat! Looking at the Smithsonian's online 3D scan of the Philidelphia's sides... those nails are 'not' square headed nails! They are flat 'Cut' nails! Take a look at the Smithsonian's 3D model. The nail heads are elongated/rectangular running in a fore/aft direction, with the grain of the wood. That is exactly the proper orientation of a correctly placed 'Cut' nail! "Hmm? I can't believe that I missed this up until now, but I did! This new observation may have just made my "Make it or Fake it" job a whole lot easier!

Hi Chuck! This thread isn't targeting the Philidelphia. It's a general question. While poking around 'somewhere', I stumbled upon something (can't remember what/where) that made brief mention of iron nails being dipped in tar, or pitch to better seal things up. I'm just trying to find out if such a thing was ever truly done, or maybe just done on a particular vessel or few. Sounds like a lot of extra messy work to me, with little benefit. Learning a bit more about ships fastenings is something that I need to do, in general. As for the Philidelphia, I'm currently trying to figure out a way to either make, or 'fake' square headed nails at proper scale dimensions. At 1:24 scale, the square heads will be noticeable. I have a couple of ideas but haven't tried any of them yet.

I was actually raised in Midland (Texas), hot and dry as a bone. Didn't feel bad at all. I left Midland for the Navy in 1979. I've now been living in Dallas for 14 years. Dallas is nothing like Midland, Texas. It's so hot and humid here in Dallas... Michigan sounds pretty darned good to me too!

I decided to purchase the 'Kindle' version. While I typically prefer hard copies of books, my bookshelves are now all overloaded because of that desire. I have books lying flat atop of 'other' books that are properly standing upright in my bookcases. Old age and a lifetime of collecting has finally caught up with me. I'm now forced to join the 'digital' age in order to keep collecting books *sigh*. That's okay, I guess, as information is just that no matter what form it comes in... but I'm having a hard time accepting it. A hard copy book has tangible physical characteristics, a nice-looking cover, pages that one can slip a bookmark in between... and also a distinct 'smell' that I find to grow more and more pleasant as a book continues to age. Computer books have none of that kind of character. They are nothing but electron blips on a plastic screen! 😔 I'll give it a review, of sorts, once I've gone over its content.

That's the way that I read it also, however. I'm also really interested in reading what is mentioned on all those missing pages.

Got it Keith! The missing pages trap was well baited... and I think I'll bite. Should be very informative in its entirety.

There are pages skipped in the link that you gave me. Is there a reason for that? I've added this book to my Amazon shopping cart and will pull the trigger on it if it is a 'complete' and worthy read.

Greetings and enjoy this forum!

Bottom planks/strakes have now been glued up and the 'Oakum' caulking has been hammered into the caulking seams. Next up... I need to better seal those oakum caulking seams with a proper topcoat 'bead' of 'pitch'.... stay tuned!

Has anyone ever heard of 18th century iron nails being dipped into tar, or pitch prior to being 'driven-in' for purposes of corrosion/rust control... as well as additional water-tight integrity of a ship's hull?

It's been a slow go this week. I was hoping to have made more progress but have only managed to get this far. "Best laid plans", you know... Anyway. The Strakes are all cut to length, and I still need to add the 'butt-joints', glue the strakes together and add the caulking to the bottom side of this 'bottom' planking. I'm really anxious to get this bottom completed and the shape cut out so I can move on to more interesting things in this build. Fingers are crossed in hopes of a more productive weekend... ** Notice the varying widths of all of the bottom strakes. No two strakes are the same. This is not me screwing up. This is per dimensions taken off of the actual vessel. There's no consistency in the width(s) of the materials that were used to construct the bottom of this boat. **

I wasn't planning on detailing the actual 'setup' of this thing, as it is quite different than any 'typical' R/C model... but I might if there is enough interest.

86.6", almost 7.25 feet

A new toy. It's going to take me a while to properly set this thing up and get it ready for its maiden flight, but that's okay. Summer has arrived in Dallas and it's just too darned hot to play outdoors now. I should have it ready by fall, when it's a bit more comfortable to be outdoors. Yes, the cat could fit, but the Mrs. has already caught me eyeballing Lulu and has sternly warned me against trying to give her a commission and a flight suit! What can I say? The Admiral has spoken and I must follow orders...

Here's that noticeable 'seam' on the aft section of the center bottom strake. Looks like nails there too, however. What about the floor timber just to the left of that seam. There are no noticeable fasteners in that area. There are actually very few to absolutely NO 'noticeable' fasteners shown on the 3D thing, of the bottom of the Philadelphia, as per Smithsonian's online 3D 'thingy'. Hmm, this is becoming even more curious... Perhaps the bottom 'was' tree nailed to the flooring timbers. If so, why the nails in this one isolated area and nowhere else? If you look at the second strake below the center strake, a bit to the right, you will see 'another' seam, but no pronounced indication of nails. I still haven't had the time to study my drawings. Work keeps getting in the way, but I will! Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution... online 3D viewing tool.

Yep, those certainly look like nails! Thanks!

Thanks Phil! I was thinking that it was probably this way, but then I started wondering about the expansion of the 'hull' after a new ship was launched and the hull got wet... and then I began to wonder if that expansion could actually 'break' things if not given some room to expand within. Wooden ship's hulls don't have metal bands around them, to hold them together and tighten things up like wooden barrels with metal bands have. The hull timbers that are in direct contact with the water will obviously expand more than the drier parts of the ship (frames) that are mainly only exposed to humidity and will not swell as much. Strakes of hull planking swelling a lot, that are fastened to frames that aren't swelling as much = a lot of stress on both the strakes as well as the frames and definitely the trunnels! I'm sure that you see where I'm going with this. It has nothing to do with building models, but real-life things like this fascinate me. I guess I just like to know how and 'why' things work whether it really matters to me, or not! I've been asking "How and Why" for 63 years. No reason to stop now! 🙂

Hello Chuck! I'm going to dig a bit deeper into this. As per John Bratten's book, the bottom planking was 'temporarily' "toe-nailed" to the flooring timbers until trunnels were successfully installed... then the iron toenails were removed. It was only the dry parts of the boat that incorporated iron nails. If this is true, then it only makes since that there would also be 'trunnels' on the sides, below the water line. "Hmm?" I'll study my Smithsonian drawings closely before securing the bottom planking to the flooring timbers. I'm sure that there is some needful info there that I have not looked at yet. I've so far only worked on the dimensions, not the fastening details. For whatever it's worth. I've already found a conflict between John Bratten and my Smithsonian drawings. Bratten claims that the center strake, of the bottom planking, was a full-length strake running the entire length of the boat without any butt-joints. The Smithsonian drawings show differently. The drawings show TWO seams in that center strake! When looking at the online 3D thing from Smithsonian, I can see one 'obvious' seam in that center strake, towards the stern. The stem section is missing a lot of detail and it's hard to tell if a second seam is hiding there, but it probably is. If Bratten was wrong about the makeup of that center strake... he could easily be wrong about the trunnels too!

Beginning the bottom planking and caulking. I'm starting from the center of the bottom and working my way 'outwards'. The bottom is being assembled 'upside-down' (unlike the 'real' building method of this vessel). I'll add two strakes every day until the oversized bottom blank is completed and caulked, then I'll cut out the shape of the bottom. I'll only do two strakes per day because I'm trying to avoid any distortion and/or warpage due to the long joints and glue runs. I'll be gluing the new strakes to an already glued up 'sub-assembly' that has cured and is rather stiff. The strakes are full length. I'm adding the illusion of 'planks' within those strakes via a chisel. The 'caulking' is .0078" diameter "Tuff-Cord" that would represent a 3/16" caulking seam on the full-sized vessel. I lightly sanded the edges of all the strakes to form the tiny groove needed to accept the tuff-cord. To insert the caulking, I run the thread through a puddle of glue, lay it in place at the start of a groove and just run my finger down the thread's length. The thread pretty much finds the grooves all by itself. I then give it a wipe with a paper towel, to remove excess glue, and let everything dry. The tag ends are cut after drying. The caulking is fairly secure once the glue dries, but it will also be sealed in permanently with a clear topcoat after the bottom is completed and finish sanded, prior to cutting out the shape of the bottom.

Caulking: Were gaps left between individual planks to facilitate the Oakum and Pitch, like an expansion joint, or did the planks rub up against each other with only a shallow grove cut into the exterior of the planking to accept the caulking? If a gap was used, between planks, would the Oakum have been driven all the way through, to the inside of the planking? Trunnels: Were trunnels installed perpendicular to the face of the planks, or would they have been 'angled' for extra strength in holding the planks in place?

Bottom planking Strakes have all been cut to various widths, as shown in the drawing. I'll clean the edges up and start cutting/separating the strakes into their individual planks while watching Svengoolie tonight. I used my cheap 4" Amazon table saw, steel rules for front and back gauging, and small 'C'-Clamps to hold my gauges in place. I use the calipers to set the cutting width of my pieces. It's kinda 'fiddly' to set up for each cut but works very well and is actually quite accurate for such a 'redneck' rig like this! For today's wood and its thickness, my deviation from measured cut width, during setup, was .017" larger than what I actually wanted. Knowing this, I just adjusted my calipers to read .017" shy of my target width and did my setups to those new dimensions. "Viola!" With a steady feed rate while pushing the wood through the blade I was able to maintain about .005" of accuracy in my cuts. Different woods and different thicknesses will affect the deviation of the cut. I always use a sacrificial "set-up" piece before making any precise cuts, to determine just what the deviation will actually be with that material.

As she was built, the Gunboat Philadelphia was started with the bottom planking being laid down. The flooring timbers were then positioned atop the bottom planking and temporarily 'toenailed' to the bottom planking, just to hold things together, until the bottom planking was effectively attached to the floor timbers via 1" wooden trunnels. Evidence of these temporary toenails are noticeably present on the actual Philidelphia as she sits in the museum today. After the bottom planking and flooring timbers were securely tree nailed together, the temporary toenails were removed, and the bottom was cut to its shape. Some folks wonder if this gunboat was built right side up, or upside down and flipped. The boat was a bit too big and awkward to be flipped. It was built right side up. Evidence of 'this' is due to a 2.75" diameter hole that was drilled through the bottom planking, approximately 48" forward of the sternpost... a hole that was plugged prior to launch. This hole was likely used as a drain to remove rainwater while the boat was being built in its upright position. I hope to have the bottom planking cut and glued this weekend. I'll then cut out the bottom's shape. After that, I'll start on the floor timbers. This is a departure from the actual building process but will make it easier for me to construct in such a small scale, as following posts will explain and further illustrate.

Armed with a few books, a good set of drawings from the Smithsonian, a set of calipers, a calculator and a brand-new box full of wood sheets and misc. sized strips of wood desperately wanting to become something of interest... I hereby declare this new build log as being ready and "Go for Launch!" Please be forewarned. The Gunboat Philadelphia was hastily built, and in such... a lot of traditional practices typically observed in Navel Architecture were not utilized in the construction processes of this vessel, nor in the construction of her seven sisters. Haste was the "Order of the day" and 'time was of the essence'! Corners had to be cut, and 'cut they were'! If you see something that does not seem quite right in my build, well... you are probably correct! I'll be building this model just as its real life counterpart was 'actually' built, not how such a boat really 'should have' been built back in 1776. These gunboats simply were not built in tradition ways, nor were they built to last. They were built solely for a specific and temporary military purpose... and nothing else! I'll be building this as a 'Navy-Board' style model. It will have full masting and rigging with furled sails. I'll also be leaving her sides open to expose the framing, interior structures, etc. Likewise with the decking. I'll be leaving parts of the deck planking off to expose the internals, with exception to the areas supporting the cannons, of course. I don't yet have a clear image as to where this model will actually wind up. I only have a mental concept of the effect that I wish to achieve once all is finally said and done. Below is the current state of my CAD file showing the layout of the bottom of this vessel and the size of the strakes, number of planks per strake, and the positioning of the floor timbers. The red lines on the strakes denote where planks were actually joined to make up the individual strakes. These planks were not joined in the middle of the floor timbers. The floor timbers were too narrow for that due to the 1" diameter treenails used to attach the planks. Instead, the planks were joined together via 1.5" thick 'Butt-Block Splices' located 'between' floor timbers and/or wherever the joints landed, and butt-blocks could be effectively placed. If you look closely, you will also note that the bottom planking strakes are of various widths. Not a lot of consistency at all. I suppose that the builders were just using whatever widths of lumber that they had on hand in order to simply fill in the bottom of the boat. Last but not least... the floor timbers, themselves, 'also' vary in 'their' widths too! Not a lot of consistency there, either. Even though these 'oddities' might look a bit 'off-putting' to some folks, I'm going to do my best to reflect them as they truly are/were in this scale build.

1776 Gunboat Philadelphia "Short in life, 'Long' in history!" A Build Log by Thomas J. Painting: "The sinking of the Gunboat Philadelphia"... by Ernest Haas In 1776, the British planned to split the American colonies by advancing south from Canada, via Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. Colonel Benedict Arnold was tasked with delaying that imminent British invasion and recognized the strategic importance of Lake Champlain. Arnold took command of a small flotilla of curious vessels in order to effectively impede that British advancement. Arnold's fleet consisted of 15 vessels, including 8 gunboats. Seeing how this is a 'gunboat' build, I'll exclude mention of the 'other' vessels. The eight gunboats built were named Spitfire, Philadelphia, Congress, Washington, New York, Jersey, Connecticut and Lee. These gunboats were all hastily constructed late during the summer of 1776 in Skenesborough, New York... now known as Whitehall, in a location at the southern end of Lake Champlain. Due to extreme urgency, these gunboats were likely built from green wood. There's also a good chance that no true shipwrights were actively involved in the actual construction of these vessels, evidence being via the unusual manner in which these boats were built. The construction of these gunboats was probably performed by local 'carpenters' who had very little experience as shipwrights, but actually knew quite a lot about building disposable, cheap and effective 'flat bottomed river batteaux's' that were used extensively in the fur trade as well as general cargo transport along the rivers located in that region. This is just logical speculation, of course. Very few records exist. It's difficult to really know for sure. On October 11, 1776, Arnold positioned his fleet in a narrow part of Lake Champlain, near Valcour Island. This positioning was strategic, forcing the British to sail into a confined space where their larger fleet's numerical superiority would be rendered much less effective. The battle began when the British fleet, under General Guy Carleton and commanded by Captain Thomas Pringle encountered Arnold’s fleet. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, Arnold's forces fought tenaciously. After a day of intense fighting, Arnold's fleet suffered very heavy damage. Recognizing the dire situation, Arnold ordered a nighttime retreat. The Americans effectively managed to slip past the British fleet during the night, but the British weren't fooled, and their pursuit continued. Several of Arnold's vessels were overtaken and destroyed or captured during this battle. The game was over, and the Philadelphia was one of the vessels that was sent to the bottom of Lake Champlain. Arnold soon ran his remaining vessels aground and burned them to prevent them from being captured by the British. This battle delayed the British advance, buying critical time thus allowing the American forces to better prepare their defenses further south. Though the battle of Valcour Island was actually a tactical defeat, Arnold's leadership and the bravery of his men were instrumental in preventing an immediate British invasion of which contributed to the eventual American victory in the Saratoga campaign that took place the following year. Arnold's actions, in 1776, particularly his bold and tenacious defense at the Battle of Valcour Island showcased his initial dedication to the American cause... before his later infamous defection to the British. Today, the Gunboat Philadelphia is noted for its historical significance and is preserved and displayed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. Its recovery in 1935, along with its conservation efforts have since provided valuable insights into naval warfare and shipbuilding practices, as they were in that region, during the Revolutionary War period. That's the brief history, now... "Let's get on with the build and make some sawdust!"

For whatever it is worth, I designed and built a Stainless Steel 10 gallon 'Fire-Tube' steam boiler for my employer this past spring. He wants us to be able to steam bend 1.5" diameter and 2" diameter solid round hardwoods as a new product line for our Architectural construction related business. Nobody else seems to do that, so we'll likely be the first. I've also designed and built a curious steam bending fixture that has adjustable 'false bulkheads' to be used as forms to bend the wood around, after steaming. No need to cut out plywood forms, etc. Just adjust the bulkheads to the proper locations for the radius required and you're ready to bend wood. It's powered by a 9,000-pound winch that folks typically put on their Jeeps and trucks for off-road stuff. 9,000 pounds will allow for much thicker timbers should the boss ever want to steam bend such. Yes, all these woods will be compression bent to prevent splintering and failures. My steam chamber is made from 6" x 6" square stainless-steel tubing that is 14' feet long, with a 1/4" thick wall. Operating pressure is adjustable but expected to be set somewhere around 2psi within the chamber. The heat softens the wood, the steam is only a 'carrier' of that heat. I'm hoping that 2psi of steam will enhance and accelerate the penetration of heat into the timbers requiring less time in the chamber and increasing efficiency and daily production. We'll see if I'm right when all is finally said and done. The chamber hasn't been built yet. Anyway, the attached video is of my initial testing of the boiler system. I needed to ensure that there were no leaks, and also make sure that my math was correct and that I was not accidentally building a potential BOMB! The tests went well, but not without a few nervous moments. The attached video shows the boiler making steam on its first firing. The exhaust hole in the center of the top has some temporary shielding insulating the hot gasses escaping from the boiler stack from coming into direct contact with two redundant emergency pressure relief valves. One relief valve is there to blow if the boiler pressure exceeds 6psi. The second relief valve is there in case the first valve fails, or the pressure builds too rapidly and needs a little extra relief! The boiler has been completed and now has a proper 'chimney'. This video is mostly just an operational test and a leak check. When I actually tested the relief valves, I moved some metal shields in place to protect anyone from shrapnel should the boiler blow up. All went well, but I must admit that I almost pooped my pants when those safety valves finally let go. I was expecting a gentle 'HISSSSSS' that would gradually get louder and louder until it started to get quieter and quieter. That didn't happen at all. Both valves let go, at the same time, with a sudden, unexpected, thunderous ROAR that was deafening! "Scared me half to death, as well as half of the factory employees!" Too bad that I didn't video 'that' one, huh! Anyway... now you know one of the reasons why I find your build log and your steam engine build so very interesting! 🙂