BANYAN

Hi Vossey,
 
I will try to describe the technique I use for 'cheesing' the tail ends of tackles. Not my original idea, but it works well for me.  First soak your rope/thread, cut to an appropriate size (if doing separate) in a diluted solution of PVS/water ( I use about a 60 water/40 PVA).  If using the actual tail end of the tackle, this still works but just soak the required length of the tail (working end of the falls)
 
I use two small squares (or round) of clear plastic (from shirt boxes or the like).  I punch a pin (usually a tack with raised plastic head) through both (See Photo).  Separate the two leaving the upper plastic square/round on the pin, and put the outer/tail end of the rope/thread through the centre hole of the bottom square with about 1 to 2mm protruding to the bottom side.  Put the pin back into this such that it holds the end and makes a sandwich with the thread between both plastic squares.  Now rotate either the assembly or wind the thread around the centre pin to start making a flat cheesed coil to the desired diameter.  Allow the finished coil to dry before removing; the plastic does not let them stick too much but still take some care when separating the coil from the plastic.  These 'jigs' are so easy and cheap to make you can dispose and remake as required, especially when the centre holes become too large from wear/use.

 
Just one way to do it.  
 
 
cheers
 
Pat
 
 

Hi Vossey,
 
I will try to describe the technique I use for 'cheesing' the tail ends of tackles. Not my original idea, but it works well for me.  First soak your rope/thread, cut to an appropriate size (if doing separate) in a diluted solution of PVS/water ( I use about a 60 water/40 PVA).  If using the actual tail end of the tackle, this still works but just soak the required length of the tail (working end of the falls)
 
I use two small squares (or round) of clear plastic (from shirt boxes or the like).  I punch a pin (usually a tack with raised plastic head) through both (See Photo).  Separate the two leaving the upper plastic square/round on the pin, and put the outer/tail end of the rope/thread through the centre hole of the bottom square with about 1 to 2mm protruding to the bottom side.  Put the pin back into this such that it holds the end and makes a sandwich with the thread between both plastic squares.  Now rotate either the assembly or wind the thread around the centre pin to start making a flat cheesed coil to the desired diameter.  Allow the finished coil to dry before removing; the plastic does not let them stick too much but still take some care when separating the coil from the plastic.  These 'jigs' are so easy and cheap to make you can dispose and remake as required, especially when the centre holes become too large from wear/use.

 
Just one way to do it.  
 
 
cheers
 
Pat
 
 

Hi Vossey,
 
I will try to describe the technique I use for 'cheesing' the tail ends of tackles. Not my original idea, but it works well for me.  First soak your rope/thread, cut to an appropriate size (if doing separate) in a diluted solution of PVS/water ( I use about a 60 water/40 PVA).  If using the actual tail end of the tackle, this still works but just soak the required length of the tail (working end of the falls)
 
I use two small squares (or round) of clear plastic (from shirt boxes or the like).  I punch a pin (usually a tack with raised plastic head) through both (See Photo).  Separate the two leaving the upper plastic square/round on the pin, and put the outer/tail end of the rope/thread through the centre hole of the bottom square with about 1 to 2mm protruding to the bottom side.  Put the pin back into this such that it holds the end and makes a sandwich with the thread between both plastic squares.  Now rotate either the assembly or wind the thread around the centre pin to start making a flat cheesed coil to the desired diameter.  Allow the finished coil to dry before removing; the plastic does not let them stick too much but still take some care when separating the coil from the plastic.  These 'jigs' are so easy and cheap to make you can dispose and remake as required, especially when the centre holes become too large from wear/use.

 
Just one way to do it.  
 
 
cheers
 
Pat
 
 

Hi Vossey,
 
I will try to describe the technique I use for 'cheesing' the tail ends of tackles. Not my original idea, but it works well for me.  First soak your rope/thread, cut to an appropriate size (if doing separate) in a diluted solution of PVS/water ( I use about a 60 water/40 PVA).  If using the actual tail end of the tackle, this still works but just soak the required length of the tail (working end of the falls)
 
I use two small squares (or round) of clear plastic (from shirt boxes or the like).  I punch a pin (usually a tack with raised plastic head) through both (See Photo).  Separate the two leaving the upper plastic square/round on the pin, and put the outer/tail end of the rope/thread through the centre hole of the bottom square with about 1 to 2mm protruding to the bottom side.  Put the pin back into this such that it holds the end and makes a sandwich with the thread between both plastic squares.  Now rotate either the assembly or wind the thread around the centre pin to start making a flat cheesed coil to the desired diameter.  Allow the finished coil to dry before removing; the plastic does not let them stick too much but still take some care when separating the coil from the plastic.  These 'jigs' are so easy and cheap to make you can dispose and remake as required, especially when the centre holes become too large from wear/use.

 
Just one way to do it.  
 
 
cheers
 
Pat
 
 

Hi Vossey,
 
I will try to describe the technique I use for 'cheesing' the tail ends of tackles. Not my original idea, but it works well for me.  First soak your rope/thread, cut to an appropriate size (if doing separate) in a diluted solution of PVS/water ( I use about a 60 water/40 PVA).  If using the actual tail end of the tackle, this still works but just soak the required length of the tail (working end of the falls)
 
I use two small squares (or round) of clear plastic (from shirt boxes or the like).  I punch a pin (usually a tack with raised plastic head) through both (See Photo).  Separate the two leaving the upper plastic square/round on the pin, and put the outer/tail end of the rope/thread through the centre hole of the bottom square with about 1 to 2mm protruding to the bottom side.  Put the pin back into this such that it holds the end and makes a sandwich with the thread between both plastic squares.  Now rotate either the assembly or wind the thread around the centre pin to start making a flat cheesed coil to the desired diameter.  Allow the finished coil to dry before removing; the plastic does not let them stick too much but still take some care when separating the coil from the plastic.  These 'jigs' are so easy and cheap to make you can dispose and remake as required, especially when the centre holes become too large from wear/use.

 
Just one way to do it.  
 
 
cheers
 
Pat
 
 

Now it's time to build magazines and all sorts of decks and beams. For that phase an accurate depth gauge is essential, so I've let my brain overthink yet another tool 
 
The requirements are:
1) Soft plastic or wood to avoid scratching the model
2) Nice looking and pleasure to use, that tool would be in active service for at least a decade.
3) Ideally it should have a thumbwheel or a knob for fine adjustment. 
 
I have a cheap plastic vernier calliper that satisfies the first requirement, but it does not have an knob / thumbwheel.

Could not find any plastic callipers with a knob, unfortunately. The plastic ones are already rare enough, let alone with a wheel adjuster.
 
Then I spotted a Lego set with a container loader ("reach stacker", to be more precise) that has a worm gear and tried to make an abomination out of it. It is surprisingly challenging to build a compact functional tool out of random lego parts, a whole puzzle of its own. Respect to people who do it on a regular basis!

It kind of works, but the play and precision is not good enough for my needs. 
So I gave up on the wheel adjuster requirement and went back to the simple "calliper on a gantry" setup.
It was a nice warmup to recover some skills that I've lost over years of inactivity.
 

This time I even got help from my little helper! She enjoyed cranking the mill  

 
The resulting design has two parts - sliding gantry (no t-tracks, it is stable enough on its own) and a "calliper holder" that slides sideways on the gantry to allow the gantry keep contact with both sides of the baseboard.
The bottom edge of the caliper is trimmed to a flatter profile to avoid hitting the keelson. Both ends of the calliper can be used for a markup to allow for a comfortable pencil positioning.
The setup relies on three clamps to fix everything in position. These plastic clamps are a bit of an eyesore, maybe I will sidetrack again to build a nicer ones  


 
 

I spent some years designing dust and fume collection systems for laboratories and research facilities. Most devices like this are of little value; it’s the nature of the beast.
Try this experiment:  Get your vacuum cleaner hose, and hold your hand a 1/4” from the nozzle. Feel the air movement?  Ok, now move your hand 1” from the nozzle:  you probably can’t feel air moving, or just barely. 2” away you feel nothing. 
Now, connect your vacuum hose to the discharge of the vacuum ( if you can). You can hold your hand several feet from the discharge and still feel the air movement. 
Why the difference?  Air best flows to where it is pushed, not pulled. 
The suction of the hose is relying on barometric pressure to push the air into it ( essentially, the vacuum hose creates a “ hole” in the surrounding area near the nozzle that the air “falls” into). On the discharge end, the energy from the vacuum cleaner motor has been imparted to the air and will move with more force. 
To better control the particles in the air, get a small fan to blow across your work surface away from you. 

A stunning build Richard; an exemplar of how to build such a model.  I have very much enjoyed this build log so far.
 
cheers
 
Pat
 

I have reached another small milestone.  All of the below deck fittings and cabins are completed.  The gun deck is fully framed as well.   Next up I will start planking the inboard bulwarks.   That should make a huge difference.  
 
I hope to see many of you this weekend at the New London show.   It should be a very enjoyable weekend.   I am looking forward to it.
 







 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Chuck

Great way to rekindle those memories Mark; good luck with this project. 
 
cheers
 
Pat

Left planking of the forward and aft platforms until after varnishing the main hull unit, in order to improve access (it was already difficult enough underneath the fixed quarterdeck structure...)
Plan 21, an estract of which is shown below (© Estate of John F. Coates, reproduced with permission) shows the planking of the forecastle planking stopping short of the port and starboard extremities (I guess, because there is no beam for the forward edge of any plank to rest on...). As you can see in the image below, ive gone along with this despite the obvious hazard involved with getting a foot caught up in the gap if the ship rolls at the wrong moment...

The aft moogin platform is shown in Plan 23 , an estract of which is shown below (© Estate of John F. Coates, reproduced with permission) together with my interpretation, which has ended up a bit wider at the aft end...

 

It might be worthwhile getting a larger piece of brass and machine the part you require. Saw and files or power tools if you have them. I think this method would be more easily controlled and offer you a better chance of success. Brass is quite soft and files to shape quickly.

Well, that's where we are at the moment.

I think the books have some errors...
Standard 81T0833

This arrangement is therefore not correct at all.

And is shamelessly copied in the next book.

And this is what it actually looks like in the drawing.
A channel or rigging rail a little bit lower.
The Calderkraft model also follows this arrangement. Thanks @Mr Pleasant 
 
 
And so does our Russian colleague.
https://www.shipmodeling.ru/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=71379  thanks @firdajan

next
horizontal planking or curved straight
Most from this period seem to go for horizontal.
The curved straight ones are starting to become a bit old-fashioned in this period, it seems to me

Thanks for following

Ian, that block looks like an ordinary block with a toggle each side. Those toggles have been found in archaeology as far back as the 11th century, though I don't know if they've been found from the Classical Roman period. They are very useful for quick attachment and release of different parts of rigging on Mediterranean lateeners - for an example of the toggle in use see my post #1217 at 
Tony, thanks for your nice comment. Much appreciated.
 
More progress on the San Marco ship.
 
Grab rings for the hatch covers:

Hatch covers in place and with grab rings (now blackened) in place. I had to wait until the masts were glued in before I could finalise the hatch covers, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to see the mast steps to guide the masts into position.


Shrouds:

Foremast starboard shrouds in place:

All foremast shrouds in place. The port shrouds are loose because the lateen sail was within the shrouds - if the leeward shrouds were kept tight they would interfere with the sail as it bellied out with the wind. 
   
Getting ready for tomorrow's Modelling Exhibition! while I'm sitting there keeping people (and their precious little darlings) from touching my models with their sticky fingers I'll probably be working on positioning the halyards and their tackle, and adding the blocks for the tacks to the yards. 
 
Steven
 

Great way to rekindle those memories Mark; good luck with this project. 
 
cheers
 
Pat

Great way to rekindle those memories Mark; good luck with this project. 
 
cheers
 
Pat

Finally an update.   I'm reading and re-reading the instructions and looking at other logs of this ship.   And I currently have all the framing (I think) done.   About to start marking the top lines of the frames.   Hopefully I get more time to spend on this project but seems real life keeps dragging me off.
 

What a great result Eberhard; thanks for stepping us through the process.  It looks very effective/realistic, especially at that scale.
 
cheers
 
Pat

What a great result Eberhard; thanks for stepping us through the process.  It looks very effective/realistic, especially at that scale.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Once again, Thank You for your kind comments !
 

Again, real life including (business) travels got in the way of progress on this project. In addition, while I was having dinner in a restaurant together with colleagues, suddenly some ‘floaters’ appeared in one eye. I went immediately to the eye-doctor, who checked my eyes thoroughly. Luckily the floaters are harmless, but annoying signs of age. No retina-detachment or something else serious. Apparently, they can spontaneously disappear or the brain sort of ignores them after a while – keep fingers crossed. For the moment they are quite bothering, when working on really small things … so on to the ensign.
 
************************************
 
The Imperial German Navy Ensign

This ensign was first conceived for the navy of the North-German Alliance (Norddeutscher Bund) in 1867, bringing together the colours of the dominant powers, namely Prussia (black-white) and the Hanseatic City States, Hamburg, Bremen und Lübeck (red-white). The design obviously was inspired by the British White Ensign and makes reference to various medieval symbols, such as the cross of the Teutonic Order, and the more recent Iron Cross from the Napoleonic War. After the proclamation of the 2nd Empire on 18 January 1871, this ensign became also the ensign of the Imperial German Navy and remained it until the end of the Empire in 1919. There have been, however, some smaller modifications over the years, thus the eagle was somewhat modified and in 1902 the arms of the cross were made heavier in order to avoid confusion at distance with the White Ensign of the Royal Navy.
Overall, it is rather complex design to reproduce purely manually. First, I had to find a correct image for the ensign, as it looked in about 1878 and was lucky, as the Internet furnished a digital image of sufficient size and resolution. The idea was to print it on both sides of very thin paper (the kind that was used in the old days for carbon copies on type-writer, of which I kept a small supply). Such paper, however, does not feed well through the laser-printer and aligning for double-sided printing is practically impossible. Therefore, I resorted to so-called transfer-sheets. These are a kind of waxed paper that is used to transfer laser-printouts to T-shirts, mugs and such things. Laser-printer toner is basically carbon-black mixed with some plastics powder. It can be remelted with a heat-source, such as an ironing-iron and thus transferred to another substrate. I also experimented with overhead-sheets, but the results were not as good. 

Printing layout for the ensign (as it would appear on the transfer sheet)
 
In a first step, the red stripe in the flag was eliminated from the image in Photoshop, as it would print grey otherwise. The ensign was then scaled to the right size on the basis of some trial-and-error, as the laser-printer prints a few percent undersize. I then added reference marks some distance from the image and duplicated this for mirroring. Several of these left-right-pairs were arranged on an A4-sheet and then printed onto the transfer-sheet using the highest quality print setting.

Preparing the pouch for double-sided toner-transfer to the ensign-blank
 
Using the best matching pair, I made a small pouch (as you would do for the masks, when producing photo-etched parts), aligning the images against each other for a perfect match on an illuminated board (they can be bought for a few €/£/US$ on ebay et al. and are powered through a USB-charger). An oversized strip of the thin paper was slipped in between and everything taped down onto a piece of thick cardboard.
I pressed down an ironing-iron set to the lowest temperature onto the package, which made the toner firmly stick to the paper and no residues left on the transfer-paper. And voilà, a double-sided printed flag with a very detailed eagle etc.

The toner is (almost) completely transferred to the ensign-blank
 
In the next step the missing red stripe was added using red acrylic paint. I also added colour to the legs and beak of the Imperial Eagle, to the Imperial Insignia and the crown using yellow-ochre acrylic paint. If one has a colour laser-printer this step would not be necessary.
The flag was cut out exactly to size, except for the rear, where it was left a tad longer to provide for a hollow ‘seam’ into which a thread with two loops at the end was laid The seam was glued down with some diluted white glue. This area also needed a bit of touch-up afterwards with black acrylic paint.
 
The ensign before adding the colours
 
Draping the flag is best done or least pre-arranged on the flag-staff. The paper was slightly wetted and the flag laid into diagonal folds in alternate directions. Toothpicks ensured that they became folds and not creases, which would be unnatural. Such a large ensign (2.9 m x 4.96 m) would fully unfold only in a moderate breeze and not in the light wind assumed in the scenic setting. So it flaps lazily in the wind, which I tried to reproduce.

The completed ensign
 
To the thus prepared ensign the halliard was attached as a loop. This loop was taken over the top of the flag-staff and a tiny laser-cut paper disc glued on as truck. There was no way to cross-drill the staff for the halliard. The halliard was belayed on the clamp. With this the assembly is ready for installation on the boat. But I will not hoist the ensign before the crew is on board. The recruitment process is still on-going …

Ensign wetted and shaped
 
Sorry, this was a rather lengthy essay on just and ensign, but the idea was to describe in detail, how to arrive on a reasonably realistic looking flag at such as small scale.
 
The ensign attached to the flagstaff
 
To be continued ....

Eberhard - thank you - my current thought is to paint the hull above the waterline to match the original but to varnish below the waterline to show off the mahogany and brass. it is still early days and plans might change depending on how neat the planking is.
 
Druxey - Thank you ----- and the angle can be changed by moving it in or out from the edge.
 
And thank you to the Black twins for their unrelenting support.🙂

BTW, talking about toolmaker's buttons: I learned about them about 25 years ago, when I purchased from Lindsay Publications (now sadly defunct) a bunch of reprints of early 20th century machinist textbooks and the likes. Among these was
 
JONES, F.D. (1915): Modern Toolmaking Methods.- 309 p., (Industrial Press, reprint 1998 by Lindsay Publications Inc., Bradley IL).
 
Just checked on archive.org and one can now download a copy from there: https://archive.org/details/moderntoolmakingmethodsbyfranklind.jones.

Since I'm starting the fore castle earlier than planned, I haven't looked at this properly yet.
According to what I have read briefly, it should look like it is drawn on the cover of the MR book.
2 light cannons and all the are rest swivels, or hail shot pieces 

I've seen these images before. 

This isn’t a carrack.

Carracks from mr. Breugel with high castles.

 
And a wel know image of a typical Carrack 

In the MR book there is an inventory (from the year 1514) of the cannons and their position on the decks in several ships. 
All the large ships (4 of them) have at least 2 decks in the fore castle