allanyed

Very clean joinery Bitao. I really like the contrasting wood colors that show off your workmanship! Allan

In addition to the fine color of the black pieces, the brass certainly looks like brass!!! Thank you very much for passing on the information. I have downloaded information and several sources. The code for the brass is MC 219. Have you tried their gold, MC 217? Thanks again. Allan

Thanks Pat, and yes please post the name if you can find it. I have my first lesson in Fusion 3D tomorrow with a fellow member here that is proficient in using it. We shall see if I am still a good student 😄 I agree Tim, based on the test pieces, resin is the way to go. Allan

Don, a lot of details on limber boards including the scantlings, direction of the grain being different in certain areas, sections to be left without the boards and the hole diameters can be found in TFFM Volume I. I understand that you are using scantlings for a sloop of war so would highly recommend this series of books for your build. There is too much to copy here without permission and the possibility of subsequent copyright issues. From a practical standpoint assume the boards are 3 feet long, 15 inches wide, 2.5 inches thick and made of oak. They would weigh about 35 pounds. How much can a sailor easily pick up with one finger in each hole, or two fingers, or three? From this you can figure an approximate hole size. This may sound silly, but I am sure practicality came into the design of many things on these vessels. Allan

The barrel is gorgeous Pat, as is the entire piece. Was the barrel made with black resin and/or painted or otherwise finished afterwards? i especially like the very subtle sheen from the light and you have answered a question I was going to ask the printer about getting the cascabel ring with no problems. Did you provide an STL drawing yourself? This is my problem as I have to learn how to do this and the old proverb found in John Heyward's book about teaching old dogs new tricks comes into play for me. Thanks for your post!! Allan

This is a repeat of my recent post in the Charles Galley build log, but thought it worth posting here as well. In working on the Charles Galley (1676) project I started working on the cannon barrels recently. As these are for 1676, I wanted to be sure the badge was correct with a rose and crown, the overall shape was appropriate for that time, including the number of rings, the shape of the cascabel, and the trunnions were tapered as they should be at that time, and well below the center line of the bore. There are no accurate commercially made cannon for this time period, and very few for other periods for that matter, so I made several of brass, made silicone molds and cast some with resin with pretty good results for the most part. I then thought about having them made with a 3D printer in black resin. I have no skills in 3D drawing and I am determined to learn how to do these drawings for future projects and items as well but for this project I was VERY LUCKY to get help from a fellow MSW member preparing STL format drawings. I sent these to a printer and asked to have some made in several materials including nylon, ABS, PETG and resin. The test was only $8 including postage so very reasonable. The resin performed much better than any of the other materials. He then made a dozen more of the 9 pounders that I needed and six of the 3 pounders. It is difficult to see the rose and crown badge in the photos, but I hope there is enough detail to see what can be done with3D printing. If anyone can recommend something like a Fusion 360 for Dummies or any book or tutorial or even another program in which STL drawings can be made without causing a lot of headaches, I would be grateful. If anyone is interested in contacting the printer that made these for me please feel free to email me. My email is in my profile. Allan

Thanks David, I am quite pleased and have some further adventures in mind with the printer. Anyone interested in using his services feel free to email me (my email address is in my profile) and I will reply with his particulars. With the cost of brass and everything else sky high, these are probably the least expensive high quality cannons I have ever seen and they are by FAR the most accurate and would be so for any time period or scale if the correct drawing is submitted. I will post in the Deck Furniture forum as well for anyone interested. Allan

I will post some photos soon of the over all model shortly, but wanted to show the cannon barrels I received yesterday. There were both 3 pounders and 9 pounders. As these are for 1676, I wanted to be sure the badge was correct with a rose and crown, the overall shape was appropriate for that time, including the number of rings, and the trunnions were tapered as they should be at that time, and well below the center line of the bore. I made several of brass, made silicone molds and cast some with resin with pretty good results for the most part. I then thought about having them made with a 3D printer in black resin. I have no skills in 3D drawing so was VERY LUCKY to get help from a fellow MSW member preparing STL format drawings. I sent these to a printer and asked to have some made in several materials including nylon, ABS, PETG and resin. The test was only $8 including postage so very reasonable. The resin performed much better than any of the other materials. He then made a dozen more of the 9 pounders that I needed and six of the 3 pounders. It is difficult to see the rose and crown badge in the photos, but I hope there is enough detail to see what can be done with3D printing. The downside??? I have no idea how to make an STL drawing and have fidgeted with Fusion 360 for a few hours and gained a lot of frustration. If anyone can recommend something like a Fusion 360 for Dummies or any book or tutorial or even another program in which STL drawings can be made without causing a lot of headaches, I would be grateful. Allan

Welcome to MSW Dr. K A 30 year old woman?? You are definitely one of our younger members coming into the fold. We need some young blood and glad you are here. Allan

Making some good progress and have given some names and email addresses of appropriate history professors to Adam to contact to alert their students of this project. Need more signatures from our members!!! It costs nothing but two minutes of your time to sign on board and help get the project in gear. Thanks Allan

But David, we all want to know why!!!! 😀 This is a little difference in over all length but at quarter scale could be in the neighborhood of 1/4" and bothersome. The main point though is that it is not up to the hounds as thought possible above. That would be a huge difference.

Glad to help Don, but for me hanging standards are more difficult. Hope that is not the case for you. The only problem for me with doing a thorough piece of research to get all the information is that I wind up seeing 10 other things along the way that I wind up reading. In the end though I suppose that is a good thing as I learn 10 things I did know about before the search on the original subject began. Good luck.

I found rigging plans for a 24 gun 6th rate, 50 gun fourth rate, 80 gun 3rd rate, 90 gun 2nd rate and 100 gun first rate on the NMM site. All are from 1745. I inserted each into TurboCad and enlarged to full size using the scale on the bottom of each drawing. I then checked the height of the main masts on the drawings from the bottom of the mast inside the step to the top of the mast at the top of the cap, in other words, the entire length. Keep in mind the drawings were low resolution but when scaling to full size they are within a few inches or so of being correct. The following are the results. NMM ID number Type Height of mast on drawing Height of mast from Lees' multipliers and Establishment breadths for 1745 J8287 24 gun 6th rate 872 inches 875 inches J8283 50 gun 4th rate 1089 inches 1092 inches J8288 80 gun 3rd rate 1279 inches 1280 inches J8289 90 gun 2nd rate 1316 inches 1315 inches J8286 100 gun first rate 1380 inches 1370 inches I may be wrong to do so using such a small sampling, but I find that the lengths in Lees are based on the entire length of the mast. Hope this clarifies at least a little. This at least gives one an argument to back up the mast height based on the formulas in Lees for this time period of 1745 to 1773. Hopefully he was as accurate in the other time periods. Maybe someone can look for additional contemporary drawings in other time frames and confirm or refute the other multipliers he uses as well. Allan

Some folks advocate CA glue but epoxy is the way I would go. You might want to consider using miniature rope in place of what looks like string in your photos. I realize it probably from your kit supplies, but if it is not too late to change, miniature rope adds so much to the rigging of any model compared to common thread found in so many kits. I have no definite answer on this one, but were the seizings made with tarred line on untarred rope? Just curious. Allan

Hi Don, I believe Steel calls for hanging standards on the midship platform rather than hanging knees. This is not the case for the fore and aft platforms where lodging knees are used on each side of each beam or sometimes a combination of a lodging knee and a hanging standard. Cheers Allan

Phil, I suppose the best thing we can do is hopefully find an appropriate contemporary rigging drawing for a specific ship or at least one that is of the same era and same rate as one's project. There are not nearly as many of these drawings as there are the typical deck, body, and profile plans that still exist. I just looked at Deane's Doctrine of Naval Architecture explanation of the length of the masts, and Lees' formula is of course identical for this time period. But, as you have pointed out, there is no mention of where the top is measured, at the hounds, the cap or somewhere else in either Lees' or Deane's books, at least that I could find. I am going to try to find enough rigging plans to make a reasonable study and download them to see if there is any consistency in where the measurements take place. Hopefully it will give all of us some base from which to work. Allan

Hello Don David Antscherl's TFFM, Volume 1, pages 187 and 213 to 215 explains this in detail. Too much to copy here without violating copyrights. Suffice it to say there are no clamps, at least for the forward and aft platforms. Also, there would be a solid construction of lodging knees, not just the beams that rest on the ceiling. Allan

In 1972 I was busy clearing the lot and laying blocks for the basement, laying bricks, and drywalling to name a few things. Only way we could afford a decent house at the time. Was a great learning experience, but never again. Unfortunately I burned every bit of the wood in bonfires and some in the fireplace over the next few years. Had I been into ship modeling, which came some 5 or 6 years later, I would have had a lifetime supply for everyone in MSW. Allan

I wish I had one of these back in '72. I cleared an acre of hawthorn trees with a hand held chain saw. They are thorny buggers and they had their revenge on me. Allan

For those who are interested in cutting their own lumber, the attached video shows a nice saw that might be of use. Click on the pic and the video should start. Allan DeathOfTheLumberJacks.mp4

You never fail to please us with your work. I always believed smaller can be just as satisfying and intriguing as big and fancy, and you have proven that very clearly in both cases over the years. Kudos Allan

Harton Thank you very much for the clarification on the term stem post,,,,,,, live and learn 😀 As to the method you describe, if it works, why not use it? If one wants to become a better builder as you describe, do you think it would be better to learn proper construction techniques by following the methods the many excellent builders here use which are based on actual practice or go with the shortcuts and erroneous results from kit instructions? I looked at the post you gave and unfortunately the planking as shown in the photo above is not remotely close to how it was done on an actual ship as far as I I know, be it Spanish, English, French or Dutch. I may be wrong, and would welcome contemporary information if this kit style of planking was ever actually used in real life on these sailing men of war. Cheers Allan

Phil, Not sure I agree on this comment. For length of masts Lees does indicate if the formula to use for a given time period is based on length of the keel and beam and depth of the ship, length of the lower gun deck, or the beam on page183. These initial dimensions are readily available on many, if not most contemporary drawings with actual figures given or a scale on the drawing. He is specific about the length of the mizen being from the step in the hold and how to adjust if stepped on a deck above the hold. I may be wrong on this, but I believe it follows that the lengths for the fore and main masts are from the step as well. I have checked contemporary rigging drawings and these indicate that my assumption is correct. For one example, the contemporary rigging drawing of a 90 gun ship of 1745 from NMM has the main mast from the step to the top of the mast as 110 feet. The beam of 1741 proposals for a 90 gun is 48 feet. Using Lees' formula for this time period, 48X2.28 = 109.44 feet. Several third rate and 6th rates that I checked are similarly close. He does state that the dates he has chosen in the appendix are conjectural, but that they are based on various contemporary drawings, models and published contemporary works including those by Manwaring, the Admiralty list of 1640, Sutherland and et al. The forward by Alan Villiers and the Introduction by Lees gives a good amount of his CV and a list of his sources for various time periods. Cheers Allan

Thanks Hartron! I still have no idea how this can possibly work and have accuracy. Can you post photos of how this is done? You mention "stem post." Are you talking about the stern post aft or the stem at the bow? Probably your translator but I don't think there is such a thing as a stem post. Thanks again Allan

Hartron, Why would there be an opening in the strake for the stem, or sternpost for that matter? Karkka, The stake should lay against the rabbet. One needs to be careful not to take it too far up the stem, and giving it a Viking ship appearance like the lower plank in your last photo. The sketch below shows where the garboard lays. This is taken from a contemporary drawing at NMM so should be accurate. Allan