Jaager

I am going to guess out loud as to what those with experience are going to suggest:

Bowsprit:  I can see no way that the heel of the spar could securely rest on the deck.  Cutting the long acute angle would be difficult, but mainly the forces on it would drive it aft along the deck.

It probably would butt against a substantial vertical timber below the deck beams or a horizontal timber that was fixed to two vertical timbers.  There would have to be caulking at the decking to avoid having the space under the forecastle be a near constant shower room.  

Red stripe - at first i thought that the red should be first.  Then, I suspect that white over color would be more difficult than color over white, so I see white first. Mask and paint red. Then mask and paint green. If you were starting from scratch. 

Would cold cause the components to contract?

I have a vague memory of an aerosol something that acted like liquid Nitrogen.

2 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

There is also an Atlantic Cedar but it could be just another name for the Northern White Cedar or a completely different wood altogether.

It seems like most any tree-like gymnosperm that did not have needles was called Cedar for colloquial communication.

2 hours ago, allanyed said:

I might have had 100 lifetimes supply

We all share have regret of - if I had only known then....    But processing and storing that much wood - let alone having the time to do it   -  at a time in your life when priorities were different. 

A recent one for me is the realization that Blue Mold infected Holly is probably more suited for our use than the snow white stock that is sold.   No wood actually used in ship building was white.  The infected wood looks like a sun bleached deck.

There is a blade that is used by carpet layers - single edge - about 4" long - a bit stiffer - starts out sharp.  Stripper blade.

On 1/28/2024 at 3:27 PM, GrandpaPhil said:

The cedar that I just used for the carvings I just made for the Revenge worked well, but was brittle from age.

It is my postulation that it is that wood does not embrittle over time.  Rather, once it is seasoned and is in equilibrium with its ambient humidity, it is its basic nature that is expressed.

Cedar is just brittle.  It was old when it was cut, so sitting around as processed stock for a long time is not the problem.  Its structure will show the effects of it "breathing" water vapor.  

Wood will swell with 100% relative humidity and shrink in a Death Valley-like dry environment.  Lignin bonds may fail - over time.   It may crack along the grain as it moves under these stresses.

As an aside, AYC is not a cedar at all, it is a sort of Cypress.

16 hours ago, GrandpaPhil said:

I am planning on building the 17th Century Dutch 80-gun warship De Zeven Provincien next and am looking at options for making the carvings.

I checked my files of Blom and Emke - I partook of the same hallucinogen but recovered before I went out too far to make it back.😉  

At least there are not decades of port laurels.  For those, my first thought would be to carve a master.  Make a negative using clay.  Fill it with a wood flour-PVA mixure.  guild that.  I wonder if this would work for balustrades?

For the free standing and relief statues, what I would try for a carving substrate:

Boxwood - Buxus sempervirens - I bought a log long ago

Castelo

Hard Maple  just to see

AYC - Alaska Yellow Ceder - it is soft and buttery - probably wants short careful strokes with an exquisitely fine edge.

Then there is the wood I had to harvest

Dogwood  (Corus florida)

Apple

Bradford Pear

and wood that I wish I could have found

Hawthorn of any variety

For what you want, you have the advantage of looking in supplies of wood sold for pen turning, general turning, and bowl blanks.  Almost all of it will be very high cost per volume, but your volume need is small. 

3 hours ago, paul ron said:

oh and is there a standard gage for these threads?

The rigging tables in old books, contracts, ad plan margins are rope circumferences.  It was easier to measure than diameter.  Rope will crush, so even if they had developed a standard caliper, the diameter measurement would be ambiguous.

We live by diameter, so pi is our friend when converting to what is needed for a model.

Diameter is easy to determine at model scale.   A dowel is all that is needed.  A fat one works fairly easy.  Place two marks around the dowel that are 1 inch apart. A tight coil of the rope between the two marks.  Count the number of revolutions.   That is the diameter.  

Internally consistent in your shop is best, so measure everything yourself.  This is how you get the gauge for commercial thread.

For linen -  go to Etsy  - enter "linen yarn"  cones  and be prepared for frustration.  Not many want what we are after, so our stuff is at the bottom of a few thousand cycling offers.

Irish or Belgian would have better QA, but I suspect that neither have the slave labor needed for economical processing. 

The Asian producers who have the low cost labor, seem to want to sell in shipping container size lots - if the size of what they are selling can be deciphered.

Be aware that 16/2  is two 16 #   not  two smaller yarns that twist up to be 16.

The larger the number, the smaller the yarn.   When twisting up three yarns,  #40 by Lea is #24 by Nm  and these will make stay size rope  For running rigging - the larger number "unicorns" are the target.

Look up "rope walk" here.

If you had the acreage,  if you could find linen seed for varieties that have small diameter, long fibers in the stem,  if the weather does not bring rain when it will rot the cut and field fermenting plants,  getting the stems into the needed fibers and then yarn is a complex and finesse sort of operation that wants years of experience taught by older generations stretching back to infinity.

gauge -  old link  not looking  to see if it still is there:  info@baltic-flax.com

I suspect that hemp fibers are too thick.  I am not sure that I have seen much hemp cloth.  Investigate and experiment and report.

old links:

https://store.vavstuga.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_code=yarns-linen-lace

https://www.yarn.com/categories/linen-weaving-yarn

https://www.threadneedlestreet.com/       look for LONDONDERRY LINEN THREAD

I have worked a lot of Black Cherry (Prunus serotina) and it is OK for frame timbers, keel,  beams etc.  but I have not tried to scrape a mold pattern in it.

I seems a bit soft for micro detail, but that is just an impression.

I was a wood ghoul  and traded cleanup labor for the small trunk of a wind downed Sweet Cherry (Prunus avium).  I billotted and seasoned it and the grain is very similar, but the color is yellow green.

Not something that I would leave natural.  The Wood Database says that Sweet Cherry is harder.  It may carve better.

I think one of the many varieties of ornamental Pear (Pyrus calleryana) would work better.  Near ubiquitous street planting in some places.

You do not provide your country  but a search jn the USA produced the following possibilities:  

https://sigmfg.com/products/sig-silkspan-tissue

https://brodak.com/silkspan-medium-white-only-2-sheets.html

https://brodak.com/silkspan-lite-white-only-2-sheets.html

https://shop.matuskataxidermy.com/products/silk-span?variant=39663254962222

and a possible substitute - low cost and a ton mole of it:

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804663477441.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller.3.3509mRpbmRpbIS&gps-id=pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller&scm=1007.40050.354490.0&scm_id=1007.40050.354490.0&scm-url=1007.40050.354490.0&pvid=edfe09b8-85c3-4f7a-bae5-4624bd4987ee&_t=gps-id:pcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller,scm-url:1007.40050.354490.0,pvid:edfe09b8-85c3-4f7a-bae5-4624bd4987ee,tpp_buckets:668%232846%238110%231995&isseo=y&pdp_npi=4%40dis!USD!6.23!3.22!!!44.55!23.03!%402101fb1917063199411381635e53ae!12000030735931987!rec!US!!AB&utparam-url=scene%3ApcDetailTopMoreOtherSeller|query_from%3A

1 hour ago, Gregory said:

but do you have any suggestions regarding JFMJr's question regarding how to drive the small nails that come with most kits

Yes.

(With the caveat that narrow economy plywood,  spaced at overly wide intervals,  is a barely adequate support at best and man-made synthetic sheet material is heretical and probably having a short half life. I am not encouraging the actual use it any of it or anything large enough to be called a "nail".)

For the first layer of planking::  

drill a hole that is a # or ## smaller than the "nail" diameter in the plank while it is on work surface.

For cheap ply - do nothing for the nail - it should crush internally with no adverse effect.  I suspect that a nail in the middle layer(s) of cheap ply will more closely resemble a glass stirring rod in a test tube than a ten penny nail in a 2x4.  A hammer may be more force than needed.

For something like MDF, do a test. if it propagates the nail's compression to its surface or resists too much, drill an under size hole.  If it accepts the compression, let the nail be a nail.

Otherwise, drill an under size pilot hole.  For MDF, if it bends the nail, drill a hole.

Hold the nail in a MM 'spike insertion plier"  or curved Kelly clamp.  Next - thru a hole in its center - place a small square piece of wood scrap that covers the width of the plank  and is about 1-2 times the plank thickness on the nail.(Hitch Chock) 

Push this assembly thru the hole in the plank.  PVA glue the plank.  PVA glue will hold metal to wood against mild resistance force.  Rotational force will break it.

A light weight hammer can set the nail.  When the glue is set, split out the hitch chock.  Nip off the nail at the plank surface.  File it flush.

For the show layer,  I suspect that it is a thin veneer.  Any sort of nail is asking for a split.  The nails are way over size to nip - file -and leave on view.

For both layers. a pre-bent plank that will just lay where it is wanted when oriented to gravity is a really good idea.  

A dry heat - a curved surface  soldering rod adapter - and a rheostat to keep the heating surface's temp below a wood char or wood cook temp will melt the lignin enough to allow fiber bend and twist and then reset to hold the new shape.   Wood wants to bend with the plane of the thin dimension.  It will resist a bend thru the thick dimension. It is spilling that should cover a bend that is lateral to the plank.  If a bend is forced against the preferred dimension in a plank, it will spend! the rest of its existence trying to twist back to its natural conformation.

!Sorry for the anthropologic verbs, it is just easier to write that way.

Putting aside that many if not most of the build logs for OcCre's Beagle have nothing to do with how an actual ship's (or bark rigged brig in Beagle) decking looked or was laid.

I believe that most builds, the trunnels are faux.  Drill a shallow hole and fill it with a dyed glue or glue-sawdust mixture.

Unless you are sophisticated about it - most of the pins that you will have to choose from will have steel as their core material.   It will rust away, leave a hole where it was and have a wide black bath tube ring stain around where it was.  Brass pins that are scale diameter have become almost impossible to find.

I have no idea how the fad came to be, but no actual 18th or 19th century vessels had short planks with the way too numerous butts of every other strake meeting on the same beam.  No vessels had trunnels, or bolts that were only at the butt joints.  The actual fasteners for deck planking were essentially invisible at 1:1 scale  never mind @ 1:60.  The seams between each strake would be so narrow that a well placed deck @ 1:60 with just the amber of Titebond II as the seam would be close to realistic.

Wood swells across the fibers.  A plank does not get longer or shorter. An end to end butt - if placed as close as should be  would be too tight for any caulking, would never move to need it.

That class of USN vessels had rock hard yellow Pine decking that was 40 feet long and 10 inches wide.  The English could not strip mine Georgia's Pine forests anymore, so their planking was probably closer to 20-30 feet long and maybe closer to 6 inches than 10 inches wide and their Baltic Pine would not turn a nail.  But it was never parquet-like in its finished look..

If you wish to do a serious recreation of a possible galleon then I think that you should use Kirsch  - especially the the reprint treatise  in the appendix - ( if there are gaps maybe some of the formula rules in Deane's Doctrine which is a hundred or more years later - but his rules came from somewhere ).  Design your own ship.  Do it on paper - I am not sure that any computer design program will allow you the tools to replicate the old line and compass method.

I suspect that some if not all of the available plans are of modern replica vessels.  Vessels designed for the tourist trade.  Vessels that include present day safety compromises.  Some of them look like cartoons of what the actual vessels probably looked like -  I am thinking Baker's Mayflower as an example.   All are just a modern author's guess - no more valid than something that you could generate from scratch .  And if some of your choices turn out to be wrong, only a bit of time is lost.  You can backup and redo.

Instead if thin plywood molds, if you do the design, your molds can be 1/2" (12.7mm) Pine and those be close together.  Then a single layer of planking would be well supported.

29 minutes ago, paul ron said:

so what thread material has the best longevity and what are we now using as a preservative if not wax?

Linen/flax   Egyptian mummies were wrapped in linen.

The currently available linen yarn seems to come from Estonia and the Baltic region around it.  They could use a much better QA system to avoid the stem junk inclusions that break the yarn during twist up.  It comes as bleached (white), half bleached (off white) and natural - which is olive green .  Natural is probably more authentic than white for running rigging.  

Linen yarn is thicker than cotton thread.

fibers -> yarn -> thread -> line ->rope        -> = "multiples twist up to produce"

The values for gauge are  tar pit 

Lea   yds/lb / 300

Nm  # 1000m/kg

Nec  # 840yd/lb

for all  the larger the number the smaller the diameter

The commercially available material is tricky to decipher.   Yarn sold as 40/2 Lea  is not what we hope it would be.  Instead of being two 80 Lea lines twisted to make a final line that is 40 Lea dia. , it is two 40 Lea lines making a final that is 20 Lea dia.   Except that twisting two lines does not double the the diameter - far from it - but the point is that it is not a way to get smaller diameter yarn

Preservative   (which is not actually what is the function)  There is too much surface area for any preservative to actually succeed in doing that.

Shellac

Renaissance Wax -pH neutral and devoid of traces of insect GI enzymes.

Lineco neutral pH bookbinders PVA

Man made synthetics will vary with what chemical chain the polymer is, but all will probably be subject to  embrittlement  by chemical reactions internal to the material - light and oxygen will speed it. 

Jamestown 1844  corvette 

There is much detail for the class on the HIC plan for Germantown.

I think it would serve you to spend a lot of time with:

The Galleon  by Peter Kirsch  - the first edition is apparently written in German  - there is an English edition - I can find no information about a possible Russian edition.

Here is a post that describes the book:

https://modelshipworld.com/topic/20489-galleon-the-great-ships-of-the-armada-era-by-peter-kirsch/

I think that central spine  is more descriptive than false keel for what that part is,  but it lacks in pretense.

The same applies to mold (mould) instead of frame.  The cross section units in POB are definitely  not frames.

KHL looks too low to be  the LWL - floating waterline  and  #2 looks too high.  

With the float waterline  - there were rules about how high the gun deck sill should be above it.  There were rules about the distance of the deck to the sill.

It was all a complex chain of proportions and relationships starting with one or two or three beginning values  - such as the length of the keel (touch)  and the breadth. 

19 hours ago, rtropp said:

Cristiano, is there any of that that is commercially prepared to be "painted" in white, especially mail order.

Might want to give it a try to cover up a varnished hull that I messed up.

As a theoretical solution:

Coat the "very fine" sanded varnish with shellac.  A worn out Tee works for application.  Then buy a small tube of white artist's oil paint. (Blick)  You can use a color wheel to determine which other colors to get to get a believable "white stuff" layer shade.  Dilute the pigment with mineral spirits and "boiled" Linseed oil down to as semi transparent as fits your goal.  You are in GA not CA, so the organic solvents and Linseed should be in your neighborhood hardware. 

Oil paint for a model size surface is not like using them to coat the walls and ceiling of a closed room.

On 1/17/2024 at 5:42 AM, allanyed said:

I have seen magnificent models with the lower planking made with holly that gives the impression of white stuff instead of paint.

I find the properties of Holly to be seductive.  However, the current price per board foot that I find on line is absurdly high.  To make matters worse, they are probably burning the off-white and yellow stock that we would really  want.

1 hour ago, Roger Pellett said:

 Some hollow ground blades made for cutting veneer are as thin as 3/32in.  I have not encountered anything thinner.

I came across one that is 1/16"  kerf and a 10: diameter,  but @~$200 I am not sure it qualifies as being something real.

https://www.infinitytools.com/10-laser-thin-kerf-saw-blade-1-16-kerf

Post #47 photo:

What I see:

A sliding block on the front.  The block has two tightening screws to fix it on the horizontal scale on the front face.

I know that it is almost impossible to set a sliding block on a scale exactly where it is wanted if there is a single screw - especially one with a lever arm.  The act of tightening it down is a turning action that slightly moves the unit in the direction of the turn.  I am thinking that the small screw is to be used first to sort of freeze the unit by being touch tight.  Then the lever can be cranked down without it moving its housing.

The troubling second part is that the actual fence is fixed to the sliding block by a single screw.  It is a door hinge.  The angle of the fence to the blade is easy to adjust - just loosen the Allen head screw.  A problem is that I see no second point to stop the fence from swinging when the lateral force of the wood between the blade and the fence is stronger than what the Allen head bolt is applying.  

That right angle beam needs to extend beyond the back edge of the table.  That overhang needs a bolt that fixes it to a backside sliding unit that has no play in how it slides along its track.

The machine in the photo does not look like the blade can cut stock that is very thick.  This does not appear to be a machine that can do more than thin stock ripping.  Maybe it gets by because it does not cut stock thick enough to produce a serious later force. 

A Jim saw can rip stock that is close to one inch thick.  Now, I would not use it for ripping seriously thick stock - because I have a 14" bandsaw  - a machine that is designed to resaw - but I suspect that I am in a small minority that has an alternate way to resaw.

The Proxxon looks to be fairly substantial.  Much better than the 4" Dremel POS or an old Jarmac, never mind the Harbor Freight junk,  but it pales when compared to a Jim saw.  But, the probability is that a Jim saw is no longer an option - at least for a while  and may never again be one.   

What do you mean by "sanding sealer"?

A stain or dye should be used on raw wood.

A true sand-n-seal product is targeted at open pore wood.  This group is generally nut wood  Oak, Hickory, Willow, Pecan, Ash, Walnut - species of wood that are either not really appropriate for our uses if the wood is to be left natural.  They will work as well as any if painted.  But the open pores will need to be filled first. 

This is what a old style sand-n-seal is for.  It was or is a thick lacquer with clear when dry fine solids meant to fill the pores.

The wood that we should be using is closed pore and tight grained.  There are no pores that need filling and a clear top coat that is thick is best avoided.

If  a primer is what you mean,  there are much better products than a lacquer with pumice or a similar solid.

The gold standard is half saturated shellac.  Cut premixed 1:1 with denatured alcohol (shellac thinner/ ethanol with an emetic to avoid taxes).

You can also use 1:1 diluted Tung oil (pure - not Homer's or similar) or 1:1 boiled Linseed oil.  In these cases mineral spirits is the usual diluent.

Shellac is ready to overcoat as soon as the alcohol evaporates.  The oils will need time for polymerization before they are overcoated. 

All in all - shellac is just too convenient unless you are not in a hurry.

If you use a dye - and for us - at this point in knowledge - I think that alcohol based dye us best - water based dye will swell the wood - our models will not sit outside in the sun and the surface is too small for any additional depth by water to be seen.  Dye - then primer.

If you use a traditional stain - which is really a diluted wood color shade paint - shellac would go first.  The primer will make the stain/paint go farther.

51 minutes ago, AON said:

The block ears are located inboard when installed but I need to make them thicker to allow finish shaping them to the profile of the timbers while keeping them the thickness of the inner planks.

I also need to make the block thicker to protrude far enough outboard to allow shaping them to the outside profile thickness of the plank on the frame.

If the only fault with the block is that the inner and outer faces come up short, a layer can be added to the block at both faces and they can be shaped.  Using the same wood ad the planking.

The species that you are using for the block body is: ?

I wonder if you might have success if the main block body is a dense species of wood?  Or even Tagua nuts?

11 minutes ago, kgstakes said:

My only complaint about the Byrnes saw is that the blade did not tilt.

I am content with the fixed 90 degrees.  The complexity and error potential that comes with the tilt function does not balance with very slight need for an angled cut with what I do. 

20 minutes ago, Gregory said:

Have  you seen what MicroMark calls a Dado Cutting System for their tilt arbor saw?

No.  It has been passing my notice.   The tooth count on that blade has me cringing at the thought of using it to cut a shallow slot.   I have a bunch of fine tooth - zero set blades that I bought over the years that can be stacked to do the same.  I bought them before I knew that they are not the proper blades for ripping.   Thurston and Martindale  - back from when Martindale kept them in inventory.  Jim was a stock recovery savior with the bushings that get 1" ID blades adapted to fit his 1/2" arbor.

I am thinking that the MM system would skew the blade at a fixed off center angle.  A wobble means to me that the blade would move freely along the arbor as it rotated.  That might be a very bad idea to do on purpose.   A loose nut on the arbor would produce that effect.

1 hour ago, Gregory said:

ask for an example of when the sliding table is the best way to use the saw?

Cross cutting:    deck planking   and other parts where there is a max length.

Grattings:   the slots for the F&A boards.  If you freehand the first one to its proper width and glue a guide that is the thickness of the blade to the deck of the slide that is one slot width out, each of the following slots will be that distance apart.  The slot is likely to be wider than a the blade, the play of the known slot and the guide will allow for as many passes per slot as needed.  If you gang more than one blade until the sum is the slot width, then the guide would be the slot width instead of the blade width since no play is wanted.

A large block can be shaped to the pattern of the gun trucks.   If the blade can rise high enough, the individual truck sides can be sliced off as identical clones.

Just make sure that the end grain is at the front and back edges of the trucks.  The width of the original plank will determine how many sides per block.   Using the length of the plank allows for more but the grain orientation would be just plain wrong.   

I would rub my thumb over the burn.  If charcoal powder sheds from doing this, it means that that surface will not hold a glue bond.  If it is just a black color - removing it is just for esthetics.

My database reports that:

A background piece of paper or card with the shrouds and foot ropes lined out might help keep the progression on track.

The angle (slope) of each shroud and the proper tension - remember that the deadeye and their links follow the slope of their shroud -

and the horizontal of the foot ropes are neigh on to impossible to get correct anywhere but in situ.

3 hours ago, kgstakes said:

I want to keep this lathe but for my “hobby shop” would like to have something smaller because of space and be able to move it around if needed.

Penn State sells a universal duplicator that might do as a one off for  the limited number of round deck fixture items on a wooden ship.

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

As for a smaller lathe,  it might be less costly to wait until you reach a point in a build where a lathe's function can't be replicated using a clamped drill or something. 

Most modelers who strictly stick to building wooden vessels will never really need a lathe - or a righteous  small machinists mill.  Both are necessary for working metals to make other machines,  but are self-indulgent gingerbread in even a scratch builder working wood's tool kit if running economically lean.