Jaager

Bruce, We discussed this, but seeing what you are doing, I have a solution to your cross grain problem. It will require some do over though. You are framing using the classic Navy Board style? An over size floor timber? A F1 that is actually F1 +F3? This is all bends with any spaces within each frame and no spaces between the bends. Frame 1 is the floor and the top. Frame 2 is F1. If you continue actual wood in F1 on above the overlap at the wale up to the rail, the hull will be a wall of wood topside. This is much stronger, but must be planked over if an elegant look is the objective. Cutting the ports is trickier with a solid wall. Right now, you appear to be framing the stb side and the port side as separate units. I am suggesting that this be done as the whole frame/bends/section of bends - or as I have termed it: sandwich. I suggest that you continue frame 2 as you are doing it - as two mirrored pieces. Make frame 1 be two or even three pieces. Frame 1 below the wale - a piece with horizontal grain - the grain running along the length of the floor. The piece will be as wide as the beam of the ship. Above the wale - a separate piece of wood with the grain vertical - perpendicular to the bottom floor half - grain oriented along the length of the top. The miser in me says that since the actual top is such a small portion, that section can be three parts. two outer pieces of Pear and a middle piece of junk wood. This means that you will be shaping a complete section of bends as the whole. -a horseshoe instead of a quarter circle- Getting at the inside will be more difficult in several ways.

It appears that Witsen had more reasons than being an interested academic (either of his books would be more than adequate to serve as a dissertation). I propose that there is a basic problem with the validity of the product. In the actual shell first construction, the species of wood used for the bottom and the dimensions probably made a difference in the conformation. A model built using the same methods would be about 1-2% of the size. The species of wood would affect the possibilities. I suspect that the shapes that the wood will allow does not scale. I propose that at model scale, the planking will be stiffer and more rigid. The properties of the materials being used probably preclude any possibility of success. The model builders are not doing a new design. They are trying to replicate a published plan. I think that their approach has at least one too many variables. It is probably an either/or situation. It would probably require the use of a special material for the scale planking. It may then be possible to use the original method at scale to derive a valid scale replication of the original design. It would probably not be something that makes for a good show on a final model. To get the desired predetermined shape, I see two paths. Loft frames from the plans and fix the planking to them - POF = Plank ON Frame. Carve an inner plug with the shape of the frames. Plank over the plug. Remove it and then add the frame timbers inside. The plug can have a Jenga style structure. It can be pieces that make a solid until a key piece is withdrawn. It would match the buttock lines - long and vertical. If the design is for the middle to come out first and the sides moved to the middle and then out, a hull with significant tumble home can be planked. I would not trust only wax and/or shellac/varnish to keep glue seepage from bonding the planking to the plug. A Saran Wrap layer would be safer.

I wonder if the answer is relatively straight forward? Except for the deck, it would pay to protect the wood surfaces exposed to the elements and a budget priced pigment have appeal. On the exposed decks, there might have been a problem with glare if the pigment was white? If it was white, then blood spatter, or dirt, or soot, or day to day abuse would require a new coat more often than red? Iron oxide is already oxidized, so it will not breakdown. Red is a team color and the pigment is probably as economical as it got. Red is heat. If we see a color, that means that it is being reflected, instead of being adsorbed. Perhaps iron oxide is also good at reflecting IR? If so, then the wood would not get as hot as a color that soaks up IR? On the lower decks, what with their being caves, I would think that some form of whitewash would be universal. It reflects all wave lengths of light. Except for mirror-like surfaces, white would be as efficient as practical allowing the crew to see. It is probably me, but it appears to me that the intensity of the red used on many models is greater than scale effect would have it be? Would the remedy be to add grey or make it more translucent - dilute it a bit?

The foundational cause lays with OcCre for supplying you with a crap wood species to begin with. I would place a serious bet on Walnut being the among most available of the various shades of both wood dyes and wood stains on the market. The shade is easy to get without having to use a wood species that is open pore and looks fuzzy and is brittle to bote. What is more inappropriate is that none of the species of wood commonly used to build a ships is anything like Walnut in color. The same situation occurs with decks. No wood used for decking is near as white as Holly. This is not a factor with mass market kits. They use economy species for hull planking, so no way would they afford the cost of Holly. (I am addressing the American Ilex opaca - harvested in Winter and immediately kiln dried - great for marquetry - English Holly Ilex aquafolium is plenty yellow enough to stand for Pine or Oak.) I get the humor -but - as a way to spend your time - Wood has no consciousness. There is nothing to beat - except chemistry/physics/Nature - where, is most cases - even if you win - you actually lose.

Someone earns credit for a clever but very cynical marketing hook. It is designed to mislead a distracted tourist into confusing prisoner with POW. It would be as good as license plates, except ready access to small sharp tools may not be all that wise in a convict population. The actual shop may be a boiler room or sweatshop environment, so feeling like being a prisoner fits. As for the Morgan, the use of totally inappropriate species of wood is blindingly obvious. Would that prospective kit buyers could see it.

It is a personal source of irritation, but asking about what is the "best" of anything much outside a bar or chatroom is pointless. It is of no use here. Asking about what is "excellent" or "necessary" or "a good value" will yield valuable information - if the subject is relevant to this site's purpose. I am going to make propositions rather than suggestions given the scant clues offered by the OP: The nature of the inquiry suggests that the OP is a beginner and is building a kit or intends to. The question does not say what is to be cut. Remembering back to my Yellow Box, solid hull days, even with the high degree of semi scratch fabrication there was little that required more that the occasional use of a narrow blade razor saw. From what I can see of it, neither old style nor recent laser cut kits require much sawing. Any sort of "saw kit" will be mostly bench clutter. The $12 plastic sprue that @Bob Cleek has found for us has no downside even if nothing comes up that requires its use. I think that serious saw use comes with scratch. Then, the jobs will dictate the sort of saw needed. With that narrow class, asking here about which saws in it are junk and which are value may save money and frustration. I agree with @von_bednar that the Japanese mini pull cut saws are easier for me to cross cut ~1/4" thick stock or similar. Many of the saw models have no back support -a pull cut does not need it - but the push reset needs care less the blade be kinked - There are choices in tooth length and set. Wide thick stock being cut with a saw with little or no set saves on kerf, but the wood wants to seize the blade. Usually, with a crosscut, kerf is not a factor worth factoring in.

Even if the wedges were not used to fix the rake of the mast - and I cannot imagine allowing a mast to careen around at the partners, unless the crew wanted to take showers at the masts on the lower deck(s), something like wedges would be needed to stop rain water or seawater overwash from flooding at the mast-deck gap. Tightly bound tarred canvas is what I understand covered the wedges on the weather exposed decks. Thinking about it, on multi-decked ships, wedges with no covering in place on every deck would serve to spread out the point of force transfer from the spars to the hull.

Masa, Looking at your printing. For 1:120 down to 1:192 I am seeing the use of a loom to hold the foot ropes tightly and at scale intervals. a kinda wide loom - soak the shroud lines with clear pH7 PVA and lay them (under tension) across the foot ropes to bond and cut free when set. I suspect that the properties of the plastic (that make it able to be melted and squirted and then adhere to previous dried plastic and solidify quickly) will also make it more likely to continue its polymerization reaction when exposed to ambient UV and oxygen to a point of becoming a brittle powder in a short time interval. I think this is the eventual fate of most plastics. But the rate of continuing reaction varies widely and some may last as long as 100 years or more. I am betting that what 3D printing material will show is 10 years at best - and the thinner it is, the shorter will be its half life.

Siggi, With your obvious superb skill at painting at miniature scale, would it not be easier to faux paint the bricks. What you have is absolutely authentic. Actual masonry at scale must be tedious and frustrating. The brick making - maybe interesting to do ONCE - just to say you did it - but so many small parts really asks a lot of an adhesive over time. Using oil base paint, a pallet to get different shades of red clay - add in a bit of pumice for the dulling - lots of narrow masking tape strips..... What you are doing is an impressive experiment, but will the extra time and work be worth the result vs using a faux representation?

Using either to do the job of a plane will probably not be a rewarding experience. A plane is designed to limit the depth of cut. The hounds region is usually smaller than the round. Use the mast required square as the chucked section and after the rounding, work the square section down to the correct square/ rectangular cross section. I would probably use the top of my vise jaws as my depth stop. As for your "Would that work?" question: i.e. hand planing to octagonal ( or whatever a 16 sided polygon is named) and then sanding vs starting with a square and using a sanding function to do all of the cutting, (putting on my professor hat) = start with two identical sticks - make your mast using a plane on one and use the drill as a lathe and use a sanding stick as a very shallow cutting turning chisel on the other and give us the result of your experiment. My imagination tells me that using a sanding stick (lots of sanding sticks probably) will take significantly longer?

I keep coming back to the thought that laying the deck would be a much more satisfying experience were you using an appropriate species of wood, instead of the junk species Anigre. One concept to take to heart is that with a wooden ship of the age of sail = there are seldom two timbers that are identical. There are mirror images. Dutch ships in the deadflat may be an exception for a long stretch. Galleys perhaps.

https://www.pennstateind.com/store/universal-duplicator.html

On a foundational level - a wood lathe is probably a very poor choice of tool for small and detailed tasks. What it works for is about ten times larger than the job on the table. A metal lathe is the tool. The precision and tolerances are in line for this job. For multiple identical copies an efficient way is to start with a pattern and use a duplicator attachment. I knowThis is the one I bought to use with my Unimat SL1000. The real Unimat lathe series is long out of manufacture so a generic attachment was my option: I realize that this is not what you want to read. It is way beyond your budget. Still, to avoid the waste of following false trails, it is better to at least have a map of the terrain at issue. I have been compulsive in making sure that the lack of the proper tool not be an impediment. It strikes me as a bit ironic that should I break my loop and actually take a hull to completion, I intend to for it to be a ship after the shipwrights are finished but either on the way to the masting and rigging dock or leaving the masting dock and on the way to the armory. My esthetics see the guns as a distraction - mostly clutter - sort of busy looking - my focus is on the swimming body.

@East Ender With a solid hull at 1:48 there is the option to use a thin veneer to plank over the hull. There are instructions here. The veneer can be spilled from a sheet using a very sharp knife and a steel straight edge. Use a better quality #11 shaped blade than Xacto or similar is my suggestion. See if you can get sawn rather than rotary cut veneer. Maybe rotary cut would play nice if you apply the PVA to the side that is toward the pith. It will probably cup in the correct direction. The bottom can be copper color dyed or Black Cherry can be used to begin with. I do not know how much detail that EAR Jr. included in the instruction booklet but Chapelle's The American Fishing Schooners, 1825-1935 has a section at the back with lots of detail.

It has been my impression that Hegner is the ultimate in quality. You bought a 'no way to loose' model. Unlike most manufacturers, I doubt that 'planned obsolescence' figures into Hegner's engineering.

Steven, I have given this some thought. How I think I would rig this: The rope at the end of the yard would be a loop. The inner end fixed to the yard. The outer end a deadeye that slips over the end of the yardarm. The opening above the block sheave that it reeves thru would be large enough to admit the deadeye. To stow the yard, all that need be done is slide the loop back over the end of the yard and back thru the block. When raising and lowering the yard, the friction/pressure point on the loop would change as the angle to the raised position becomes more horizontal. If the rope is less than perfect quality = a longer working life. The upper block - if I remember the physics correctly - twice the length of rope must be pulled as is the distance that the yard moves - the work is half. I would lead the line over to a double block fixed at the mast - just under the top. The line from each end would go thru this same block and then go down fife rail. Being in parallel, one man could handle the yard - or a group working together. I would try a deadeye at the end of each lift lead that was just below the mast top block. A hook would tie each line to a single down haul line. When the hook was pulled to deck level the yard would be about half way up. That would be about the optimal height for the sail to be reefed or have another band of canvas added. Storm or light winds. The line with the hook could be separated and stowed at the fife rail and the two lifts pulled and tied off when the yard is fully raised. This reduced the length that a single line must be. There may be some economic or equipment maintenance advantage to that.

I have zero knowledge about the rigging of the yard, but there is a notable presentation in the picture in post #2. I am not sure if the picture is not the first one from the time that I have seen where the forecastle has a deck that is horizontal enough for a human (and not a chameleon) to stand on and do something other than hold on for dear life. The camber in those old pictures is usually absurd. For the rigging, perhaps you could do a mock up using the components shown and see if there is a way to lead the lines to actually raise and lower the yard.

I don't think in metric for length or weight but I was thinking 1/4" and a G search for 1/4" AA Birch ply revealed that 6mm is ~1/4" I would try to find some AA Birch ply. Mainly because it is the mostly likely to be flat and stable. I saw that over here HomeDepot has a 4x8 sheet for~$50 and Lowes has 2x4 sheet for $22 - so buying the 4x8 gets you 4 2x4 sheets for~$13 each, HDs have a vertical jig with a crosscut saw and probably do one or two cuts for free. HomeDepot is where a lot of contractors buy so maybe your contractor suppliers may not try to pay off their mortgage by selling one piece of wood like some of your dealers seem to be like. If the developers of POB had used descriptive instead of hyperbolic terms for the two key parts - much misunderstanding could have been and be avoided. 'Central spine' or just 'spine' is what is often called 'keel' or 'false keel' in POB. 'Mold/mould' is what is called 'bulkhead' in POB. Steel ships have bulkheads. Seagoing junks had bulkheads. Wooden sailing ships did not have bulkheads. If a "window" is cut in each mold P&S at the same level - after the molds are bonded to the spine - a wooden, or metal bar can be threaded on each side of the spine - this should go a long ways towards stopping any scoliosis.

This is bringing back my teenage years, I remember a Revel Cutty Sark - whose rigging defeated me - zero outside references then. I think a plastic Constitution and a Corsair II (?). The memory that sticks is that at most any scale, plastic is a really poor material to use for the spars (masts and yards). Even if it is a plastic kit, for the masting and rigging, it is time to go scratch with wood and scale appropriate cordage.

Yes, I concur. My focus is on frame timbers. If there are serious curves involved here, Lucy, you've got a problem. Shallow arcs are the usual worst, except when getting to the AP. My bandsaw does this easily. For the sharper curves, I backup, cut a keyhole and rotate the stock. I use 2' long stock and I have to crosscut into shorter sections. The clearance on a 9" top is not all that much. When I arrange the patterns, I never seem to leave a clear crosscut path, so it is sometimes a fun experience. I question if most economy scroll saws are engineered to cut ~1/4" Hard Maple - and Castillo is even more dense. I suspect it requires a serious model scroll saw to cut stock for POF above the 1:70's scale.

The hemp fibers were straw colored -I think. However tar was introduced at the spin up stage as a preservative - Not heavy - but enough to inhibit fungus and discourage the rats in the warehouse. So, darker than straw - certainly not snow white. Natural linen yarn is almost olive drab. As is, an interesting color for running rigging.

Looking at Siggi's wall and doors under the forecastle, I can see that the galley enclosure might be fixed, but I wonder if the left and right bulkheads would be taken down. The boys supplying powder and shot as well as the officer who was the gun director might find a doorway too limiting - traffic jam and a sound barrier. It would also make peachy keen wood sharpnel. Addon: Who knew it was spelled sharpnel? Based on the way it was pronounced I thought it was schrapenull - a German word - not the name of the English inventor. First time I ever had reason to write it.

I think that when they cleared for action, there were no cabins. The walls were taken down and stored below. So it was an either/or situation.

It is irritating and misleading that unscrupulous marketers name any tropical species that is a bit chocolate in color as Walnut. Almost none of them are any Juglans sp. Epoxy would probably do your bonding. Given the fight that it is putting up, going belt and suspenders would be wise. The dowel should hold tight while the epoxy cures.

I use a bandsaw (9"-old MM Taiwan -type) - I would not use it for much else, but for scroll cutting it does a good job. The key augment is the Carter Products Stabilizer. The attaching post is too small for my machine - A couple of slices from K&S brass telescoping tubes with windows for the set screw fixed that problem. Were I to be in the market for another 9" (or 10") benchtop bandsaw, my first decision point would be to make sure that there was a Carter Stabilizer made for it. At the time, the Stabilizer cost about as much as the saw. It is still ~$100. It allows the blade to swing like a screen door. I would not wish to scroll cut if the blade was fixed using upper and lower guides. Using just my imagination as my guide, I started with 1/16" blades - they were soon removed from the market. I then went to 1/8" blades. My unit uses the common 59.5" blade length. Most of the brands are poor - snap easily and are dull. I decided to go quality domestic. I saw a deal on Olsen blades and bought a case. I did not read closely. They were 1/4" blades. I decided to try them anyway - given that I was stuck with them. Their arc is less than with a 1/8", but the difference is insignificant. The 1/4" blades are sharp and they last far far longer than a 1/8" blade. I was a very beneficial mistake. Now - down to the question - bandsaw blades have set. The kerf is wide. The wood surface left is not smooth. A cut close to the line is not advised. I use a method where I align the timbers using pins placed outside the edge of the timbers. Getting close to the line is not something I want. I even have a wide border around the pin sites, because the set sneaks up on me. A slice into a pin hole looses me that pin hole. I often use Hard Maple for my framing. I can scroll thru 1/4" thick stock about as fast as I can accurately guide the cut. (As long as some of the tiny cut offs do not sneak into the blade's track and jam or cause resistance. Those plastic inserts for the blade at the tabletop do not last long. I made Maple replacements and the chunks get thrown instead. For the blade to take advantage of the Stabilizer, the insert must have a hole instead of a slit, so that the blade can swing. I have an economy model of a MM scroll saw. It is junk. It is under powered. The blade clamps are poor and weak. The work chatters. No way it could cut 1/4" Hard Maple. If you want close to the line, a high quality scroll saw is what is needed. Hand or powered. I use sleeveless sanding drums. A 80 grit paper on a 3" dia. x 6" long drum mounted on the 1/2" shaft of a 1/3 HP totally enclosed cooling fan motor does not take long to remove any excess wood left by my bandsaw.