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MSzwarc

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Everything posted by MSzwarc

  1. I don't have any contemporary sources, but look up the term "brightwork" in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary. Also, from Howard Chapelle's Boatbuilding: "Varnished or oiled decks are called 'bright decks' and are perhaps one of the highest tests of workmanship a builder has to meet." And here's a link to the Google books page on Brightwork: the Art of Finishing Wood by Rebecca Wittman, with a good description of what brightwork is.
  2. Maple works well for modeling. machines and sands well, holds sharp edges, and can be worked to a finish like glass if desired. The more highly figured pieces-- curly and birdseye-- are excellent for use in bases, but it's best to use straight grained stock for the model itself.
  3. The term "bright" means the woodwork was varnished rather than painted. No pigment would have been used on brightwork. The term is applied to both varnished woodwork, and polished metalwork on ships and boats.
  4. Nice to know that someone is still pushing a pencil around a curve to make a drawing of a ship. I recently made a set of reduced-scale ships curves with an eye towards doing the same. I also tend to spend the greatest part of my modeling time mulling things over in my head, putting tools to materials only when I believe I've worked out the correct approach. BTW, Herbert Pockett-- real name, or from the character in Dicken's Great Expectations?
  5. Thanks for the link, Wayne. I found more useful images in the Google preview than in any of the searches I did. The cover art of the book shows a painting of a pilot boat with no ratlines (and no shrouds?), and a crew member at the masthead standing on the top mast hoop. Also found a photo of a pilot boat with furled sails and also no ratlines. Can't quite make out if the foresail is loose-footed. Anyway, great link.
  6. Thanks for the photo, Frankie. I had seen brailed foresails before, but didn't see how this would be easily accomplished without ratlines. I, too, have done searches for both the Phantom, and for pilot schooners in general. A search for the Phantom specifically only brings up endless pictures of the MS model. And while I've managed to find a few pictures of other pilot schooners, none of them have a loose-footed foresail, and they also all have ratlines.
  7. Perhaps such actions were not officially sanctioned, but apparently actions against civilian towns did occur when British officers "exceeded their instructions." From Chapelle's History of American Sailing Ships, pp. 33-36: "It seems that certain of the New England coast towns had made themselves conspicuous by active opposition to the Crown, and thhe British naval commander at Boston felt that their insolence should be punished. This officer, Vice-Admiral Graves, directed the fitting out of a small squadron, composed of the Hallifax , the armed ship Canceaux, and the armed sloop Spitfire, all carrying 6 guns. These he placed under the command of Lieutenant Henry Mowatt, with orders "to operate against certain enumerated towns." Before sailing on his mission, Mowatt was also given the armed transport Symmetry of 18 light guns. One of the towns against which he had orders to act was Falmouth [now Portland, Maine]. Arriving on October 17th, 1776, he sent an officer ashore with the demand that the townsmen remove themselves, their families and goods out of the village within two hours as he intended to carry out his orders to burn the place. To appreciate the situation fully, it must be remembered that the season of the year was so advanced that if these intentions were carried out it would be too late for the inhabitants to obtain new homes without great privation. It may be doubted whether Mowatt really had the orders he claimed to have, not only because of his actions, but also, according to British historians, because "his instructions were tempered with moderation." At any rate the townsmen sent off a deputation to beg that the reputed order should not be carried out. Mowatt refused to promise but proposed that if the settlement would surrender all its firearms, including four small pieces of artillery, and all ammunition, as well as turn over four hostages, he would refer the matter to his superior at Boston. After some deliberation, the townsmen rejected the proposal as too uncertain in results compared to the loss of their firearms in a wilderness. Mowatt therefore burned the village the morning of the next day. Great suffering resulted, but of more importance, the whole coast was aroused against the British."
  8. Thanks again, Wayne. A bosun's chair was the only method I could think of, but it seemed there had to be a handier way to go aloft.
  9. Thanks for the reply, Wayne. Are you saying the crew would use the mast hoops as a sort of ladder to go aloft?
  10. On a schooner like Phantom, without a fore boom, how would the foresail be furled? Also, how would the furling of the main topmast staysail and gaff topsail be handled, since there are no ratlines to allow the crew to go aloft?
  11. Thanks for the comments, everyone, and thanks for taking a look at the build log. The turtle ship is now finished, and I've posted pics in the completed model gallery.
  12. Looking good, Wim. I found the tail structure to be the most poorly designed part of the smaller kit. Very aggravating to try to get the two tail fin pieces shaped, attached, and properly lined up.
  13. To break up the tedium of making the spikes, I decided to begin installing those I have finished. The installation goes quickly compared to fabricating the spikes. I started at midship so I could define the unspiked pathways around the hatches. I've got not quite 2/3 of the spikes made now, and about 1/3 of the spikes installed.
  14. Interesting photos, showing how barely visible things like trunnels and coppering nails are closeup, never mind at modeling scale.
  15. Thanks for your comments. More modeling madness. I decided to get the anchor out of the way since I didn't want to even think about the spikes yet. The kit anchor consists of two wooden pieces, with a thread wrapping. As I compared it to photos of anchors on turtle ship replicas, though, I could see that neither the construction, nor the shape of the flukes was the same, so I built my own anchor out of 21 pieces of wood, paper, and brass. With the anchor done, only the spikes remain, so it was time to figure out how I would do them. I considered miniature nails as well as pins, but rejected both as too large and not the look I wanted. Studying photos of the spikes and armor plates on the replica in Seoul, I decided that the spikes should be 0.02" in diameter, and should protrude 2mm from the tile. I decided to make them out of 0.02" dia. brass rod, 4mm long as follows: 1) cut rod to 8mm lengths-- easier to handle in The Dremel than 4mm 2) point both ends of rod in Dremel rotary tool 3) cut 8mm rods in half 4) blacken using Blacken-It Finally, 0.018" dia holes are drilled in the center of the armor tiles, and the spikes are press fit by pushing in with a piece of plastic rod drilled 2mm deep with a 0.025" dia hole. This tool ensures that all the spikes protrude only 2mm from the tile. On the test section I made up, no glue was necessary for a good, tight fit. The process works, and results in the desired appearance, but producing the approximately 500 needed spikes will be tedious and time consuming, so I'd best get on with it.
  16. I'm still poking along at a tortoise's pace on the turtle ship. I finally finished rigging the sails, each one constructed of over 100 pieces of wood, paper, and thread. Aside from positioning the sails on the model, and belaying the ends of 8 ropes, the rigging is finished. The rigging thread supplied with the kit is nice quality, but stiff, so it's going to take a bit of work to try to get it to hang naturally on the model. I added the structures to the tops of the masts that are visible on the replica in the museum in Seoul. They appear to function somewhat like crosstrees, and provide a shoulder for the halyard block. The long structure on the foremast just below the finial is used as a hoisting point to raise the masts. I painted the dragon head and the "ghost mask" as the instructions call it. While both are painted brown with red eyes and white fangs on the ship in the Seoul museum, I decided to take a bit of artistic license, and paint mine with a little more color. The ghost mask was base-coated with flat emerald green acrylic, dry-brushed with Mediterranean blue, and then coated with a blue-green wash. Finally, the eyes were painted with a metallic gold lacquer, and the high spots of the mask were dry brushed with the lacquer. The same procedure was used on the dragon head, but obviously with different colors. I finished the flag, as well. The kit-supplied flag is black cloth printed in gold. Since I used paper for the sails, it made sense to do the flag in paper, too. I drew the Chinese character for "turtle" in white ink on both sides of a piece of black paper, and then used strips of paper to hang the flag on its arm. All that remains to be done are the spikes, the anchor, and final assembly.
  17. I use a ropewalk I made from an old Norelco razor head, and I've never had a problem with the rope I've made untwisting. Rather than using a traveling "top" to keep the strands separate until they twist together, my ropewalk has the razor head at one end, where the three tie points spin independently, and a disk at the other end powered by a drill, where the three tie points spin around each other. The rope actually begins to twist together at the midpoint of the strand, and forms out towards each end. To make a right-twisted rope, I tie a piece of thread between each of the three sets of tie points. It doesn't matter whether the thread is right- or left-hand twist, because the first step is to twist the threads to the left using the razor head. If the threads are left twist to begin with, this tensions them. If they are right twist to begin with, this step untwists them, and then twists them to the left, and then tensions them. I put a good deal of tension in the threads before I twist them together in the opposite direction using the drill. This way, the rope is actually formed as the tension is released in the individual strands, causing them to twist around each other. In other words, the rope is not formed simply by twisting the three strands together, but rather by pre-tensioning the individual strands, and then allowing them to essentially twist themselves together by releasing the tension in a controlled fashion. The rope thus formed needs no additional hardening.
  18. I use fish glue, a liquid variety of hide glue, for much of my modeling. It's archival, water reversible, and is effective on most materials I use.
  19. One pass with a sharp block plane, no scraping, but I did moisten and press the shaving. Could have made it thicker, and no loss to saw kerf. There are lots of ways to do things.
  20. The only naval figures I am aware of close to that scale are a set of 1:96 scale civil war sailor figures put out by Cottage Industries. Obviously, you would have to resculpt the costumes to suit the Victory, but at that scale, it wouldn't be too difficult.
  21. It pretty much depends on where a modelers interests lie as to which books would be considered "essential". My own interests are in workboats, fishermen and whalers, and exploration vessels rather than naval vessels, and my modeling interests lie in building boats to a large scale and miniature ships, as well as small dioramas. So books in my library that I consider essential are: Shipbuilding in Miniature by Donald McNarry Ships in Miniature by Lloyd McCaffery Waterline Dioramas by Justin Camarata Period Ship Modelmaking by Philip Reed Miniature Sailing Ship Construction by Robert Wilson To Build a Whaleboat by Erik Ronnberg, Jr. American Small Sailing Craft by Howard Chapelle Sailing Ship Rigs and Rigging by Harold Underhill Bluenose II by L. B. Jensen HMS Beagle, Survey Ship Extraordinary by Karl Heinz Marquart Down to the Sea: the Fishing Schooners of Gloucester by Joseph Garland How to Build Dioramas by Sheperd Paine There are many more that I find useful, but these are the books that I wouldn't want to be without, as far as my interests go.
  22. The Journal of Bounty's Launch by Lt. William Bligh, RN, annotated and illustrated by A. Richard Mansir, published 1989 by Kittiwake Publications, ISBN:0-929834-00-3 This interesting volume is put together with the modeler in mind. The body of the book consists of transcriptions of portions of the journal that Lt. Bligh kept of the harrowing 4000 mile, 48 day journey he and the 18 other castaways made in HMS Bounty's 23' launch, along with an introduction, illustrations, and drawings by Richard Mansir. The text of the journal is as Bligh wrote it, complete with peculiar spellings, punctuation, and abbreviations, and the seemingly random capitalization of nouns and adjectives. The journal entries alone make for an interesting read, but they are accompanied by Mansir's tiny pen and ink sketches, as well as several pages of full-color illustrations, including detailed illustrations of the launch and its contents, a speculative illustration of the launch as modified by the castaways, and maps of the incredible voyage. Following the journal are the launch's lines, 3-view drawings, and several drawings of various construction details of the launch, as well as drawings showing how the sails were rigged and used. And finally, there are some brief notes for modelers on building a model of the launch. I found the unique format of the book to be completely engaging, providing the reader with a first-hand account of this amazing voyage, and then providing the experienced modeler with the drawings and details to build a model of the launch. The drawings are certainly sufficient to build from, and can easily be enlarged to the desired scale. The modeler's notes suggest a construction procedure, but are not in any sense an “instruction manual”. And the modeler can glean plenty of details to add to the model from a careful reading of the journal and examination of the illustrations. This book would be a useful addition to the library of anyone interested in the story of the mutiny on HMS Bounty.
  23. Hi Wim, it will be interesting to see the larger kit go together, with its interior details. I keep thinking I'm nearly done with my build of the smaller kit, but there's still so much to be done. Good luck with your build.
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