AnobiumPunctatum

Slowly but surely moving ahead with stern cant frames.  I'm doing a bit of progressive fairing as I go while trying not to go too crazy.  I'm pretty happy with the look of the chocks.  Just a tiny bit of contrast due to the grain direction, but still pretty subtle.  
 

Adam
 

Hello,
because I was not really happy with the tiller, I build today a new one.

 
 
At that picture you see on top the drawing Dammann did, with a too short plug. The black thing in the middle is the original tiller, or what is left of it, and my calculations for 1:10. Below that in 1:50 and the new tiller.

And here is he installed. I think it looks much better

 
 
 

Siggi,
 
In my estimation, you can count yourself among the very best in the ship-modeling community.  There is, simultaneously, precision of craft and the hand of the maker.  Your tiller is a real treat!
 
Best,
 
M

Hello and thanks for your comments and likes
today I build the tiller for the rudder. After turning most of the handle, I had to glue it to a peace of wood. My fingers are too thick to hold it. It's 21 mm long, and the handle after the head has 1 mm Ø.

I carved mostly with my small V cutter and my carving knife. Using also small files. And that is the result

This is a little faking, because the tiller is too short to go through the slot 😐 But you would't see it 😇

And now in action, but not fast

Well after a very long wait for me I eventually got my workshop back in November.  I did however revamp it with a bigger work area and decorate it too.
 
So back to building Le Rochefort at very long last!  In my last post I had to remove a few planks and have a good clean up.  Since then I've been happily getting the planking done.  I think the comments above sum up the issues I had so I think pictures tell a better story than words.
 












More tree nails






Final sanding a a very light coat of shellac sanding sealing



 


Some of my joints leave quite a bit to be desired but on the whole I think it looks OK.  I could have made life so much easier by using much thinner planks but I wanted to stay true to the drawings and scantlings.  Next time I will not use black archival ink for the joints either as I think it just looks far too stark.  I would probably use brown ink or just a HB pencil as my dodgy joints would not stand out so much!
 
I've learnt how to spile planks now too and I have found that once you get your head around it the process is very easy to do.
 
The ship has sustained a bit of damage in the process and as such I need to repair the counter timbers a little and remake the taff rail stantions.  Its no big deal - I think it was druxey who a long time ago said that they probably wouldn't last the distance during the build - he was right 🤣  I wanted to remake them anyway as I had missed out the detail on them which would have been difficult to do in place.
 

The new and improved taff rail stantions which I knock out earlier on the mill

So thats me back at it and although I've been participating on the forum there's nothing like actually building 
 
My next jobs are to cut the limber channel and shape all of the frame spacers on the port side.  I'm then going to concentrate on the stern just to beef it up a bit as it's too exposed at the moment.
 
Another job is going to I'm going to make a heavy duty keel clamp.  I didn't enjoy chasing the hull around the work bench and I've seen that others have made one too. 
 
Thanks for your patience  - Mark
 
 

Hi all
 
Back from our lovely holiday and straight back onto Le Rochefort
 
I'm now working on the crews quarters below the quarter deck and have started with the bulkhead which has a double entry door.  This is quite a feature on this ship so I want to get it as good as possible.  I started by making the shiplap planks that form the walls which I then glued together to make the actual walls.


Next was to look at the doors themselves - I usually just get a solid piece of wood and then mill out the features to make them look like doors.  In this instance I thought that I would try a new exercise for me and make them from individual parts and include all of the relevant joints as they possibly would have been made originally.    Each frame is made of 5 pieces which then require 4 inserts in each door.

Milling out the rebates to fit the 0.7mm inserts

Sorry I should have taken more pictures but here are how the doors turned out.  Assembling the parts actually proved to be one of the hardest parts.

Next I needed to make the door frame uprights which have 2 rebates cut into them and also the base rebate that the walls slot into.


It all took a little bit of fettling to get all of the parts to fit correctly but I'm just about there now.



I did have one issue and that was with the door frame uprights which stopped the whole assembly from sitting flush with the beam.  This maybe because I miss read the drawings but to get around this issue I cut some rebates into the beam which actually makes the whole thing stronger and more stable
 

It's all still a work in progress but I'm getting there with this particular part of the build.
 
Mark

Thanks for the tip Mike - your frames look great !  I know many use monofilament successfully.  I really want to simulate the square bolts that were used on French ships of the period - so square wire either copper or brass is my preference.

Thanks for your comments !  Tobias - I haven't received Vahur's delivery of Black Hornbeam - it should arrive any day.  I won't be using it for another month or so as I want to finish all the frames before beginning the keels parts where it will be needed.  
 
Update - the first 29 frames of 58 total are assembled and roughly finished.  I will be installing bolts once they are faired and ready for final install into the jig.  I have seen either copper square wire or brass square wire as the material to simulate them, copper has the advantage of blackening it in situation without bleed into the surrounding wood. I am curious if using brass do most simply just install the brass square wire and let nature burnish it over time or blacken it.   My understanding is you will need to seal the wood first before attempting to blacken brass in situation to avoid the bleed.   

Greetings Group,
 
Back in 2017 shortly after finishing Confederacy, I attempted my first Ancre scratch build, La Renommee.  I have always been in love with this Frigate and her unique lines.  I, however did not possess the skills yet to do her justice, nor a mastery of my recently purchased tools (chisels, Byrnes Machines, Sanders, and my first mill).  Raising small children and establishing a new business also provided problematic to achieving my goal of building this ship.
 
I worked on a few other projects including Le Gros Ventre in 1/36 scale which did increase my skills with the scroll saw, sharpening and working with chisels and scrapers, the Proxxon MF70, reading plans, building a build site and milling wood.  However after a 2 year break and revisiting my progress I noticed, being new to creating frames, they were too large and would require a heck of a lot of sanding to get to spec.  Also the Proxxon MF70 while not a bad tool, is not nearly as accurate as my recently acquired TAIG mill.  I really wanted to give all the keel parts another go with this tool.  The question became do I re do Le Gros Ventre, or work on one of the other Mongraphs I own in both 1/36 and 1/48 scale (Egyptienne, Renommee Amarante, Requin to name a few)
 
A friend has shared the frame drawings of La Renommee 1/48 fully laid out (in the Monograph Boudriot only drafts half frames) and easy to print on my home computer.  These are a god send vs running to the local UPS store to make copies over and over again (my experience with Le Gros Ventres frames).  After running some tests I found I do like the smaller scale of 1/48 (at least so far) as it gives me the option to rig later. So Ive sharpened all the tools, cleaned up the workshop and La Renommee was started again two weeks ago.
 
So far I have completed 14 frames that are very accurate with only about .5mm of fat.  As you can see the notches on the frames are a bit complicated.  I can not image this build without having a good mill.  I have some black hornbeam on the way from Hobbymill in Europe to use instead of ebony for the black parts and plenty of Pear I've collected over the years.  I will need to learn metal work in the not too distant future and carving in the really distant future, however I am confident with some good coaching I'll get there.
 
 
 

Good morning group,
The keel is finished.  In some places the joints could be tighter but most importantly its straight and all the notches are in spec with the plans to receive the frames.  Time to move on to the construction site

Thanks Druxey - this keel assembly was not easy so I appreciate your compliment here !

Another day, another joint!
 
This will sit between glass plates through the night to insure it dries flat. I can then remove some of the excess material along the curved contour of 4 and 5. The flat on the top of 4 will be cut a bit later so that it matches the top of the stem. It also looks like I can start working on the joint between what is done and the stem.
 

A few more parts connected (3, 4, and 5) together today. 4 and particularly 5 are delicate; this is why I left quite a lot of material on the top for now. Once the bottom is matched to the surface of parts 1 and 2, I will go about removing material / shaping the top contour.

Loracs, I'm using Rhinoceros, I found it to be rather intuitive, messing around with it a little and some quick google searchs have gone a long way for me. I have not tried something different, so I can't compare. Rhino seems to be what most folks use here too. And, part of the reason I started this topic is that I haven't found one that adresses my questions regarding redrawing plans, so I hope to crowd source some knowledge through here.

So, I wanted a not too complicated to learn both 3D modelling and ship construction. I decided to go with a ship's boat, because you can't get much simpler than that for a first scratch project, and because the result might come in handy in the future for ships that, well, will be fitted with boats. Imagine the designer behind the plans had access to a CAD program, that is what I'm aiming to achieve. Thus, I'm looking at understanding how ship's lines were formed, so I can reconstruct this little launch from principle, not from merely tracing all the plan's lines. With that, I hope to get a more accurate model to the original designer's vision, by mitigating the limitations of the hand drawings and measurements of the time, of the 200+ years of wear the plans have been through, and of the distortion the scanning process might've added on top of it all.
 
On this topic, I'll be registering my progress, in a step by step manner. I insist that you guys point out where I've got something wrong, even if you're not sure of it yourself, we might learn something by looking into it! I'm expecting to make plenty mistakes, and the purpose to pick something simple is that I can start it all over again without pulling too many of my hairs off.
 
So far, my main reference has been The Elements and Practices of Naval Architecture, from '§ 2. OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SHEER DRAUGHT OF THE EIGHTY GUN SHIP, FROM THE GIVEN DIMENSIONS' (p. 242) and onwards. Steel's book is aimed mostly at full on ships, but many instructions are aplicable to our purposes, many require a fair deal of interpretation - he is not the most clear and didactic, which is not helped by my still limited knowledge of ship building vocabulary, and by english not being my first language.
 
Why this 23ft launch was picked, specifically? I tried a couple different boats out, I made some sense of this one the faster. The stem's radii and those of the midship frame are really important dimensions that I struggled with on other plans, but that I fairly confidently figured out for this launch.
 
My take is that ship's boats were neglected subjects in their time, at least from a more technical stand point, and that today they likewise get less attention when compared to the more complex and exciting subjects, hopefully this will be a more thorough and complete reconstruction.
 
The next post, I'll take you back to the beggining of the model's construction, but, for now, I'll leave you with how the model is looking present-day:
 


- Arthur

HMS Lizard ( 1697) WIP

It’s looking perfect.👌 

First three parts of the assembly are in place. Joining parts 1 and 2 was challenging due to the curved shape together with the fact that 2 drops into 1. The joint between 1 and 6 is LONG! 

This is what the joints look like from behind:

Next steps:
Jig fixing tabs removed from blades and blades shaped to plan view using a ply template pattern (that same 0.5mm ply I was originally planning to use for the blades...) Blades fixed to oar shafts between prongs. As the slot between the prongs was milled to 0.5mm the prongs flare to accomodate the long taper on the blade (0.5 to 1mm thickness...) as can be seen in the upper part of the image below. Prongs tapered along the long taper of the blade to remove the flare (see sketch reconstruction of blades in previous post) the side taper (to bring the edges of the blade down to 0.5mm all round) was then done using a file and sandpaper by hand, as can be seen in the lower part of the image below.
Total time taken for all this approximately 40 mins/blade. Quite a lot longer than just fitting 0.5mm ply blades and probably almost impossible to see the difference once they are finished and painted white, but so be it...

Tapering of oar blades:
Image top left:  jig, made of holly to make it (hopefully ) robust enough for use with all 62 Thranite oar blades.  Top right: set up in machinists vice on Unimat with spacers cut to incline the top surface or the jig correctly for the taper to be cut. In hthis case it is set up for the short taper which means a 1.25mm difference over the 30mm length of the vice. (0.4mm difference for the long taper). Bottom left: Long taper being machined (both sides) Bottom right: Short taper being machined (both sides)
Finally 62 Tranite blades tapered (about 16 mins/blade...)

 
 

Finished fitting 62 handles to the Thranite oars...
Now rethinking the blades.
I havent been able to find drawings of the original Thranite oars in the Trireme Trust Archive. However there is a drawing showing how these were modified in 1989 to reduce their weight from 17kg to 6 kg by shaving down the shafts, and reducing the thickness and area of the blades. Extracts from the Midhsip Section (Plan 8 ) and the Modified Oar drawing (Plan 15e) show how the form of the blade was altered. The upper plan view is of the original form and the lower plan and section shows the modified blade.

Extracts from Plan 8 and 15e( © Estate of John F. Coates, reproduced with permission)
The oval form of the blade was also intended to make them slide over one another more easily to reduce entanglement.
As you can see from the section view the blades were not simple flat pieces of wood, as I had originally planned for my model, but were tapered. The form of this tapering in the original design is sugested by this image of the full size ship.

Ive reconstructed this form in the following sketch for my model:

The lines in the plan view radiating from the end of the shaft prongs show the edges of the tapered faces which I will need to machine in the blades, although the photograph sugests that the inner faces were faired to remove any hard edge.
 
So, I now need to make up some more jigs...
 
 
 

I finished gluing up the aft cant frames.  My plan is to simulate the frame bolts with copper wire and blacken any exposed bolts on the model with liver of sulfur after fairing.  I used wire labeled 0.019" diameter to simulate scale bolts 7/8" diameter.  There are 2 types of joints on the cant frames.  One type uses chocks and the other a simple scarph joint.  I wanted to save some time laying out the bolt patterns on the frames, so I printed up some guides on label paper.  I found that to work great.  I drilled the holes using a micro drilling accessory on the Sherline lathe.  I broke my last drill bit, so no more holes until I find some more.
 

 

Adam

I've started attaching the aft cant frames.  No more until I add some basswood spacers at the top of the frames.  Soon I will also start fairing the internal part of the stern before too much more gets in the way.
 

 
Adam

I would agree with Christian. It's also much easier to apply planking at the bow without the knee in the way.

I will definitively be string the structure in a safe place after building it and then attach the cutwater / head once the hull has been planked.
 
Thanks for the input / direction!
 
Greg