Thukydides

It is interesting how in the pictures above there are sunk in straps around the whole rudder, but then the pintles are bolted to those straps. Was this a uniquely Dutch thing or was it used elsewhere?

One thing that is unclear to me from all this discussion is if the overlap needs to be such that the lower plates (those closer to the keel) overlap the upper plates (those closer to the waterline), then how do you keep the plates parallel to the keel as practically speaking doing plates from the keel up is not easy due to having to slip the next row under the previous one.

57 minutes ago, yvesvidal said:

Thank you, Kevin.

 

While finishing the lamps, I have a few questions regarding the staff and ensign on these period ships:

 

- How was the ensign attached to the staff?

- Was the staff equipped with a pulley at the top, to raise the ensign?

 

Any precision or explanations would be much welcome.

I thank you in advance.

Yves

 

There is a 1768 contemporary model that shows the attachment for the flag staff, It is hard to tell from the resolution on the RMG site, but there is clearly a loop of rope so there must have been some sort of pully so it could be raised or lowered. I suspect not a full block as they likely would have depicted it if it was, more likely just a metal hoop or maybe a sheeve in the staff itself?

https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-66316

https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-533928

Edit, actually on second reading it seems the model was made in 1974, so probably not a great source

2 minutes ago, AJohnson said:

Yes, thanks for sharing all these great details. I will be trying to replicate them later this year hopefully on my Trial. 

Just as long as you replicate my later versions not the earlier ones . Some of them are frankly awful, but this model was meant to be a learning process so by the time I am done hopefully I will somewhat know what I am doing.

As an update, this is what I have found works the best at this point (an update from my previous post where i detailed my method) is to do as follows:

1. Use a needle to pull the whole rope through itself at the starting point.
2. Split the pulled through strands into the three segments and use super glue on their ends to make sure they don't unravel.
3. Weave each of those ends back and forth through the rope pulling them through with a needle. Ideally you want to weave between the strand not through them, but this is sometimes hard to achieve given the small scales.
4. Pull everything tight and while left under tension coat the splice with watered down fabric glue and leave to dry for a few hours.
5. Use a fresh blade to cut the ends off and then cover the splice with a watered down coat of matt varnish.

In all stages use the smallest possible sewing needle that will allow you to get the rope or strand through the eye.

12 minutes ago, dunnock said:

There is another conundrum relating to the RMG model of Trial. The photos taken by @tkay11 show a second set of sheaves in the main yard. It’s difficult to see, but it looks as if two ropes run through each sheave from a block stopped to the mast cap. I presume that the rope runs to the deck but I can find no reference to this piece of rigging in either Lees, Steel or Marquardt. I added this second set of sheaves when I made the main yard but I can't rig them until I can be sure how it runs.

I am not exactly sure which ones you mean, but if it is the ones I think they are it looks like at least one end is secured to the bits. See below:

She looks fantastic, looking forward to seeing her in the case.

Log #71: Raising the Boom

Next up is the boom.

I rigged the block for the boom topping lift in much the same way the other blocks seized to the mast head were done. The main difference is I used a 3.5mm block instead of the 3mm ones. I had wanted to use a 4mm one, but as I have previously discussed, when I went to buy them they were no longer available and so I had to settle for 3.5mm.

I also have been experimenting a bunch with the fake splices and I am slowly getting better at them, though at the same time they are slowly getting closer to a real splice.

According to steel the topping lift should be 4.5 inches cir, this works out to .57mm, but as I didn’t have any 0.6mm rope I instead used 0.5mm.

Counteracting the topping lift we have the sheet tackle. For this I used 0.45mm line copying BE’s arrangement.

For the sheet line I used 0.35mm line. Steel seems to indicate this should be 3 in cir which works out to 0.38 so close enough. I am still having a bit of trouble with the different names between the alert book, steel and the kit instructions, but as there are so many mistakes at this point I am mostly just making sure it makes logical sense and roughly corresponds to steel / the alert book.

And here is the current state of her. Now that all these counteracting lines are in place I need to tie them all off to get rid of the clutter. You can also see I am still working on the tackle for the boom topping lift as the block is spliced onto the line, but is waiting for the glue to dry before I cut off the ends.

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by for the encouragement, she is really starting to look like a sailing ship now.

Great tip on the rings, they really do look much more to scale. Amazing work as always.

Fantastic, unfortunately there is no way I could ever fit this thing in my house .

Fantastic work, you have a lot of patience to do all that masking.

On 2/3/2024 at 10:16 AM, realworkingsailor said:

 

I have to laugh, you can just hear the Newfanese:

"A lot of people's concern is we don't want it to go back out to sea," he told the Canadian news outlet. "If it goes back out to sea, we're not going to know nothing."

 

I wonder what the editors at the BBC thought of that sentence….

 

Andy

The funny thing is that is still probably a paraphrase. He likely said

"We're not gonna know nuttin"

They found copper platting and tree nails so likely dates between 1775 and 1850.

Looks great, how thick is that tape you are using?

1 hour ago, dafi said:

This could be an english original for the drawing above. Even with a copper sample 🙂

Is this from a national archives document?

12 hours ago, TJM said:

Question:

I have a question though: the manual says to use the tiny 0.1 mm natural thread for the ratlines (when I get to that), however, are they not too thin? That would correspond to a rope diameter of only 6.4 mm! It may just me ignorance on my part, but is that not too thin? Using 0.25 mm thread, would correspond to 1.6 cm rope - but is that way too thick?

If you take a look at steel (dated a little later than flirt's launch) https://maritime.org/doc/steel/tables/pages/131-BrigOf160Tons.php it gives the shrouds for the fore mast as 5in cir (0.63mm di at your scale) and the ratlines (on the next page) at 1in cir (0.12mm di at your scale). If you scroll through you will find he also gives the same for the mainmast.

There is also available online an earlier version of steel's tables transcribed https://www.goldenhind.ru/steel_en/dimensions.pdf

However, it does not have as much detail in the 1781 tables and the ship of 14 guns appears to be a ship rigged sloop rather than a brig.

11 hours ago, Gregory said:

 

I don't want to take my model work outside, bring my full sized tools into my relatively small modeling area, nor re-configure my full sized tools to work on a one-off modeling project.

Still, I guess it remains an option.

This is my problem, my workshop is my bedroom or (if I am generating much sawdust) my kitchen table. So I have almost no room for any large tools. So I am always interested in small things like this that will potentially enable me to at least be more accurate and speedy than using my hand held pin vice.

6 hours ago, allanyed said:

Sizzolo

Thanks for the source.  Now, I wonder if any modelers coppering the bottom will be reading this string of posts and show the false keel outside the sheathing on the keel itself.  I read the paragraph just now and I do wonder what he means that the false keel was filled with small nails.  Is it heavily nailed like hob nailed boot soles or something else?  For our purposes these would not be seen anyway, but I am curious.   

Allan

Perhaps it meant that small nails (as opposed to large ones) were used to make it not hold on to the keel as well as of the nails had been driven deep into the keel.

Alternatively is it possible the false keel was still coppered? Just separately than the rest and the small nails redera to nails that held this copper to the false keel but didn't go through to the keel itself?

12 hours ago, Ian_Grant said:

It will however be quite tedious to paint these details later.

I think you made the right choice. Where they are not obscured if you paint them first it shouldn't be to bad, especially if they are going to be a lighter colour than the hull. The detail looks like it would work with drybrushing well which is minimal effort and if you paint the hull later, the overspill won't matter. Could even consider masking them off after painting if you are worried about the steadiness of your hand, but hard corners tend to be pretty easy to follow as long as you take your time and don't try to get right up to the edge immediately.

1 hour ago, AON said:

By miniature you mean extreme short (baby) chisels?

And you've space to install the hanging and lodging knees?

Are your fingers slimmer than mine?  🤣😂😇

I have the veritas ones and they are really nice, only about 3 inches long each.

https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/tools/hand-tools/miniature-tools/chisels/72391-veritas-miniature-chisels?item=05P8501

Looks great Allan

Great job, looks very nice.

Welcome to MSW

Log #70: Rigging the Gaff

With the ratlines out of the way and lots of lessons learned I have now moved back to a more fun part of the build. I do enjoy the rigging as it always feels like there is tangible progress when you are doing it. My plan is to rig the gaff and boom first followed by the topmast and then slowly work my way forward.

Step one was to prepare the necessary blocks. I tried a new technique for attaching hooks based on suggestions given back when I was rigging the cannons. It seemed to turn out pretty well so I may continue playing with the method you can find more detail on in @glbarlow’s cheerful log.

And here is the final result along with a block for the gaff peak halliard.

The rigging of the gaff is a bit confusing as it is called different things by steel and the alert book, but I think the discussion is best summarized by directing you to @Blue Ensign‘s log here. The main difference from my perspective is that I had previously decided to use smaller blocks for the peak halliard (or outer tie) than the throat halliard (or inner tie). This meant that the steel rope sizes (3.5 and 3 inch circ. respectively) did not make much sense as I would be using the smaller blocks with the thicker rope.

In the end I just reversed the sizes using .45mm and .35mm rope. This may not be technically correct, but it visually lines up with what I have already done.

I have also come up with a new way of faking a splice. I think this looks better than my previous attempts and though I may play with the method some more I thought I would share it.

The first step was to use a needle to pull the rope through itself. I did this twice, first one way and then the other. Once I had done this I split off one of the rope strands and repeated the process.

I then split off a second strand and pulled only one strand through twice. The end result is progressively less of the rope woven into itself.

This final result was coated with watered down fabric glue and left to dry. Once dry I used a scalple to remove the ends leaving the imitation splice.

With that I have the gaff raised.

I am currently using clips to hold things in tension until they stretch a little to hold their shape. Please note that I currently have everything only temporarily secured and I am aware that the throat halliard is tied off on the wrong place (it is meant to tie off at the bits). I need to do some more research to figure out what all these tie offs look like and where the excess rope should go before I secure everything permenantly.

Great job on the repair, damage like that is always frustrating.

This will make a great starter kit I think. Looks great.

2 hours ago, DaveBaxt said:

Thank you Andrew. I will take a look at your cutter build log and see what it's all about. Are washes just diluted acrylic dull black? Thanks you as well Allan. I am not sure what matt clear I'd. Are we just talking about a matt varnish? Thank you for your time and patience.  Best regards Dave

A wash is diluted paint which has a few other additives in it to help it flow into recesses better. So it collects at the edges giving it definition. A number of brands including vallejo, army painter and games workshop all produce washes in various colours.

You should definitely prime them black (make sure you wash them with warm soapy water and an old tooth brush first to get rid of any oils). Then there are a lot of options afterwards. You could leave them as is or if you want them to look a bit nicer you could look into weathering powder as BE suggested.

If you want to put a bit more effort in, using a combination of dry brushing and washes can get you a really nice finish. I did not bother varnishing after I painted mine as I liked the sheen I had and the acrylic paint should be fine.

Enamel paint is another type of paint which some find produces nice results, but it is a bit more difficult to handle than acrylic.

It looks fantastic. The weathering is spot on.