Kevin-the-lubber

Ian, I tried using handheld scanning with a phone to map Hellers victory quarter galleries last year, but for reasons I forget I gave up on it. I think I was only able to get the rough shape but I’d need something better for the level of detail I was seeking. I imagine a proper 3D scanning setup might be better, but that’s way too expensive for this hobbyist. Modelling the boats has been an education in this respect. I was gifted a full size, finished 3D model of the jolly boat, but making that fit for my purposes meant recreating it entirely in Fusion 360. Essentially, I could only use it ‘as is’ or as an excellent reference. I think photogrammetry may be similar, for modelling: an approximation, but you’ll have to do so much post-scan work that you may as well do it by measurement, if that’s possible. But I’m all ears if anyone has had more success with it.

Thanks Bob, I saw your Robert E Lee on your CS log, looks lovely and that’s fast work! I’ll have to take a look at the build log. I hope you’re making a good recovery - spinal surgery is serious stuff. I’m having an ankle fused in two or three months time, and even that makes me nervous. On the bright side I should have some recovery time to spend on models! I’m just finishing off the replacement boats and will post some photos soon. It’s been a lot of work, most of which won’t even be seen since they’ll be upside down, but I wanted to understand how to model these in the software and to have ‘stock’ clinker built boats that I can recycle on other models. I’ve started modelling the masts and yards so I’ll be behind you on rigging as modelling anything from scratch always takes a lot of time. In fact I’ve started modelling the hull, which would mean nothing on the ship would be revell, but as that will be a project in itself I’ll do that as a separate build down the line, possibly at about 1/75 or even 1/50.

My view is this: whatever looks most right and gets you closest to what you want with the least amount of work. In other words, the line of least resistance. I don't know about you but I find fairing on a computer to be much more difficult than if I was doing it to a piece of timber. No options here to run your hand along it with your eyes closed, feel the little bumps.

I don’t know if this will be at all helpful as I sense you really do want a true scarf joint; but me, I would fake it, and engrave the lines into the wood. (Actually, since I 3D print everything, I would just design them in). I don’t know how rhino works but in f360, if I wanted a true scarf, I would loft one part from top to bottom using guide rails, then cut the matching half with the lofted one and probably offset the face of one of them by a little for a bit of clearance.

Easily done, isn’t it, I glued the catheads on wronghanded last week. Bill, the ink I’ve mostly used is Windsor & Newton Peat Brown, but that was because I particularly wanted a reddish hue to mimic varnished teak. I also have a pot of W&N nut brown which is similar, I suspect, to walnut. The only reason I bought W&N is because that’s what’s in my local art store 300 yards away, and I like to support local shops wherever possible instead of adding to Jeff’s obscene levels of wealth. (Why would anyone want so much money - as my gran used to say, there are no pockets in a shroud). And I’m in a similar place to many of you when it comes to doing jobs around the house. I find myself looking at all my machinery - the planer/thicknesses, the saws, bench drill, biscuit joiner etc etc and thinking, shall I sell them now, am I really going to do the remaining jobs if I retire next year. You lose the enthusiasm once there’s more pain than gain 🤕

Thanks Bruma, I know that is all very good advice. I'm a lot more gentle on myself now than I was a year ago, with the Victory; if I don't feel like doing something, or want to work on another area of the ship, I just do. And I know what you mean about there being no irrelevant parts, these ships were masterpieces of design and everything is there for a reason.

You could always do what I did, and take up 3D printing. It doesn’t have the same satisfaction as making something by hand but, if like me you can’t do that anyway, you still have the design challenges.

I will indeed. Don't hold your breath, these boats are fiddly to do and it might take me a while to get to the end point (though I hope not too long)

Perfect, many many thanks Waldemar. I'll need to spend an hour or two properly digesting and playing around with this at the weekend and then compare the outcome with the quick'n'dirty version below, done as outlined in post #7.

Hi Kris Well, F360 is free for hobbyists. It has it's foibles and can be frustratingly clunky at times but I've managed to find ways to do everything I've wanted so far, including clinker hulls (screengrab below), despite on many occasions saying I was going to properly try Rhino with a view to switching. Declaration of self-interest here, I'd love someone who has used both tools to give an objective appraisal so I know if Rhino is worth the learning curve and cost! (These boats are a work in progress but they print fine) I don't know if it can import rhino files but it can certainly import .fbx files. Though working with these is a bit of a PITA as they come through as meshes. I suspect you really won't need this but I found this F360 tutorial very helpful to get going quickly https://diyodemag.com/education/exploring_3d_part_1_beginners_guide_to_fusion_360 Good luck, it would be good to hear what you land on, what it's like etc. I've just had a pretty quick skim through your build log and FYI, I've initially lofted each strake separately as F360 can give you the runaround with lofting if the profiles are too complex (relatively speaking) but I'm no expert on this. Just noted that you look like you've lofted as whole station profiles on yours. I'll try to find the time to read your log properly over the next week as you seem to have run into problems with Rhino but here's a link to a man who can almost certainly help you there

Waldemar, many thanks, that's exactly what I'm looking for, the logical projection method. I have forgotten so much over the years. Have you used a constant radius based on the '0' station? From a pattern developers perspective I think that is all that's needed to get a fair shape from these three views.

Gosh but this is getting a bit involved! For what it's worth, my experience of shop floor engineering, as a craftsman, is that very little was really done by eye. Back in the '70's we used to make 10 foot long, 3 foot diameter helixes on a forge and would swear blind it was all art, neglecting to mention the many templates used to get the right twist. So while it's perfectly possible that the cutty's boats were made by eye, many other boats would have been made using scientific methods like whole moulding. What I'm interested in is those methods, rather than getting hold of lines plans - I have enough info from the 3D jolly boat to produce the goods, but I'll be none the wiser as to how boatbuilders knew the station profiles to begin with.

I agree Roger, this has nothing to do with CAD, it’s a process question. What I’m asking is whether there are common methods for deriving the profiles and the answer seems to be yes, lots of them, and it depends on the type of boat, the era, and where in the world the boat is from. I think I’ll see what I can learn from the references but at 1/96 anything close to the sketches will be more than good enough.

Bill, I like the look of that and it's very nicely explained. Have you seen Bruma's sails on his Cutty Sark? Absolutely exquisite, but far too ambitious for me this time round. Ditto Rob's method on his Glory of the Seas, which is a completely different approach.

Hi Bill, I also now just catch up on others logs periodically via the weekly digest, as I was spending more time on logs than the model! The sails are a dilemma, aren’t they. For me this is largely because I don’t yet know if I have the ability to make something that I’ll be happy with. This is one area where 3D printing probably isn’t going to be the way to go, though I’ll certainly be giving it a go.

Hi Henry, lofting is key here. At present I’m lofting each plank/strake and using rails to hold the shape. Also using f360 by the way.

Hi Shipman, yes I could certainly do that, and a few variants, but it wouldn’t give me a “formula” for next time. CAD is a red herring here - for sure it can make it easier but a scientific method should always be quicker and easier than trial and error.

The aim of this particular exercise is three-fold - it's partly to make a better set of boats for the 1:96 cutty sark I'm building, via 3D development and printing; partly to have a set of 'stock boats' that I can tweak through scaling to get something reasonable for just about any ship that had clinker-built boats; but also to learn how to build hulls properly before I launch into building them for ships. I've already created the hulls for a jolly and a gig, see below; the two on the left come with the revell kit, the two on the right are mine, the gig is just a re-scaling of the jolly. I can of course re-scale and mirror (more or less) the front half of the jolly to get a quick result for the lifeboat on the left and probably will just to maintain progress, but that would leave me still not knowing how to develop the station profiles. I think whole-moulding and other ancient arts will be the way to go, I'll probably enjoy learning that as I love those old, often incredibly clever ways of doing things.

Thanks both, there has been a little voice in my head telling me that I'm mis-remembering. I've just had a quick google on whole-moulding, don't fully understand it yet but it looks to be the 'scientific' approach I'd expect to find, especially for ships as opposed to little boats, where you could probably just get there by a bit of trial and error.

Morning all. I may be having a senior moment but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to derive station profiles from the drawing below. Am I being dense and, if so, what's the method? As a one time pattern developer many decades back, I'm convinced I should be able to derive them using projection but I'm getting nowhere on this. I know plenty of ways of cheating here but that's not the goal - I'm looking for the scientific method, if anyone can help.

Bill, unless you’ve already done so, I’d recommend starting to play around with inks (and oils) about now so that you have less trial and error on the model itself. I think Marc seriously understates his considerable knowledge of painting and that is a factor in his results. I’ve loved the effects you can get with ink but think it does need a bit of practice, mostly so you make a mighty mess a few times and have to learn how to extricate yourself from that. Not that I’ve been too successful in that department. And although I’m not sure if Marc uses them, lately I’ve been using oils for the washes and feel this is a very, very good idea while I’m learning, because whereas with acrylics and inks you have a few minutes to get it right, with oils you have hours and hours and can even just wipe it all off and start again if it’s not what you had in mind.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve done that already on the Cutty sark during dry-fitting of the masts and yards. Most of the time it makes no difference, the yards pop off, no damage done, but it’s a worry with all that rigging to do!

Johnny, I'm still far from decided on what to do now, but realise I need to make that decision before starting work proper on the masts and yards. I quite like the type of look in the pic below, but that may be beyond my abilities. The approach you demonstrated in Bruma's log looks more likely, or something in between. I want the ship to clearly have sails, just for these to not obscure the view too much and, and far as possible, I want to avoid running rigging as I'll be hard pressed to even make a decent job of standing rigging. I expect I'll have to do quite a bit of trying things out first and the absolute fall-back is no sails, if necessary. Meanwhile, I've been trying out making the masts and spars in resin, with carbon fibre inserts to give them strength. The results have been good so I'll be persevering with this and making up the complete foremast assembly first. To be honest it shouldn't really be any hassle to include the jackstays, or any other feature; it's easy enough to include the cleats and slide some 0.3mm or 0.2mm wire through them afterwards. My problem right now is that I'm seeing so many different versions of yards that I'm not sure which design to follow, and to a lesser extent, the same with the masts and fittings. Underhill says one thing, Hackney another, Campbells drawing give an entirely different size, scale and design to revell, and so on! I managed to find the answer to the question I raised above, about the futtock shrouds, on p.90 of Underhill; the lower deadeye is stropped to the head of the futtock shroud where it protrudes through the top. I guess I'm going to be looking for answers to the same kind of question many times on each mast assembly, as I try to figure out what cleats, for instance, need to be included and where, as I don't think I can simply copy revell.

Eleven days on and still reading rather than doing. I know this will be anathema to some of you, but is there an easy read 'rigging for clippers' book out there, a kind of 'rigging for dummies'? Whilst Harold Underhill clearly had enormous passion and knowledge, it feels like I'd need to read 'Masting & Rigging' cover to cover at least twice in order to have some idea of where to find answers to questions! While writing can I ask one quick, simple question - do the futtock shrouds pass through the fore mast top and connect to the fore topmast shrouds via the lower set of fore topmast deadeyes?

Looking at the yards more closely, there are a good few 'eye bolts' missing so I may need to give some thought to this. I've also been looking at Bruma's log again this afternoon, which is probably fatal, especially as I'm finding the yards to be a bit brittle (am I just looking for excuses to remake them all?). Now that I've started reading Underhill I better understand what you've done on the Glory, with the sails furled on top of the yards. That's another pause-for-thought issue for me - I now understand that the image I have in my mind is from a much earlier age of sail, when the sails would indeed have hung from the bottom of the yards whereas that wouldn't have been the case on clippers.