Jaager

Sloop is an ambiguous type designation. The vessel in Antscherl's book is the 18th century version. There is a merchant /civilian vessel type. In the 19th century - for the USN : Sloop-of-War - the class and distinctions within it 1st class, 2nd class, 3rd class based on size and number of guns. They were also termed corvettes - there may have been a size distinction to which were called corvette. Corvettes were also a creature of the 18th century. The defining characteristic was that they carried their guns on one deck. In general, the number of guns was 16-20. As the 19th century progressed, some or most had a spar deck. A sort of roof over the gun deck that made it easier to manage the rigging. No guns and not much of a bulwark. A frigate carries guns on two levels (decks). There may only be 2-4 guns on the quarterdeck, but that makes it a frigate. As the 19th century progressed, some frigates had their 2nd level guns removed, the upper bulwarks cut down, and perhaps the beams replaced using less substantial ones - to become razee corvette. The RN changed the sparring on some of their brigs - Cruzier's were a subject for this. The main and fore masts were made less lofty and a full mizzen mast was added. For some reason they were called brig sloops. Though born brigs, they were now ship rigged and the same size as Sloop-of-War.

This is a great idea. Search " Commerce " and tag these too. All Gerard Delacroix inventory is now ANCRE. Even if this particular vessel seems to have defeated all attempts so far.

I did not want to know this, what with all the super fine grit abrasive media out there. A final sanding of layer one with 100-120 grit with provide the tooth required for PVA to hold the two layers of wood together. For a bonding surface, glass-like is not good.

Mark, A thought that came up when I read what Richard said about the inventory focus at Cooks: what they sell is a minor fraction, and a premium one at that, of their supplier sawmills' product. If they have to buy the lot to get their premium stock, perhaps they have a backroom with the boring stuff we want. Or maybe they can tell you who they buy from and you can learn for us, where all the boring stuff goes? Who sells it? As I read it, Madrone at Cooks is a species where they have to buy the lot. It is most likely from that mill that I contacted and their stock has experienced the special session in a kiln. They (the main mill) make a point of saying that if Madrone is not special kiln dried, and air dried instead, the result is mostly twisted toothpicks i.e. cupped, twisted, warped, and severely checked. If I have this correct, when you look, think of it as red colored boxwood.

What I see: this is a POB build. The molds are 3 layer plywood. Your dimensions are for the mold extensions that are inside bulwarks that are fully planked outside and inside? Just this between two layers support is 5/32" at the waterway and 4/32" at the rail? Aside from making the already weak plywood even more fragile, it is not good practice to propagate and error and shave down the other supports. The simple solution is to scab (PVA glue with careful clamping) a piece of 1/16" veneer on the inside to repair your overzealous sanding. Woodcraft has 1/16" veneer packs. The two species that will be of use for other places on a ship model that will be seen are Black Cherry and Hard Maple. A #11 shape knife blade and a steel straight edge should do what cutting needs doing. A piece sawn from scrap Pine would do, as would any appropriate bit of wood from your scrap bin, or layered up curls from a full size hand plane on Pine. By asking this, I am guessing that you are where most all of us were when we started. Not many tools, no scrap bin.

I trust that you mean this is jest. Being 3 litres negative water balance in Piedmont Carolina in Summer-like temp sort of makes it difficult to maintain the necessary internal balance and not start to denature some temperature sensitive enzymes and receptors. I think beyond a certain age, our internal thirst safety drive can get to be below the strength of signal necessary to gain our attention.

Mark, Placing myself in your shoes for moment, but with my bias, what I see at Cook Woods: Castello from what I seek, their stock looks sort of the opposite - too busy - and the price!!! My back of the envelope calculations tell me that I would need 8" x 2" x 60" to frame a hull the size of La Belle Poule. Pear too busy and too expensive. Holly the cutoffs box looks promising. @ 1/64 a 6" piece is 32' long -- if there is enough of the longer to make it worth getting, excellent for hull planking and can be dyed - black = a safe and user friendly Ebony substitute - icky yellow - the bottom treated planking -- blue - topside the deck if toned down from white. Ceylon Satinwood take a look at the grain and cost, but think spars - Probably good for planking but the cost? Yellowheart the same - I have some really yellow stock, but their photos have theirs a bit more toned down it should work for most any part of a ship. again cost? Madrone When they say "a better Swiss Pear than Swiss Pear", my ears perk up. It is locally sourced for you. You can actually massage each board, look for color and straight grain, see if it is straight, tight, hard, no pores. If their advertising is actually correct, you have the potential for a golden ticket.

Would shellac not also do the job? Not about resisting scratches, but an easy sealing layer. Or conservators wax?

These are a few ideas about what I would try, if I was doing this now. Raw logs can be heavy and difficult to manage and secure. They are easier if they can be processed in the field. I know that it is possible to a freehand rip cut to bisect a log with a chainsaw. A problem is holding a log that wants to roll and getting bottom clearance so that the chain is not also digging into the dirt. Theoretical solution = a Bora Centipede ( smaller version) with 2x4 rails, right angle steel brackets and long screws. The wide footprint and portability looks promising. A log can be then be held horizontal and at tabletop height. A chainsaw will produce a fearsome waste to kerf, but if it this that or nothing, it is worth it and if correctly, the pith is removed - saving later problems with seasoning. A good two stroke chainsaw is an excellent tool, but also expensive, a pain to start and maintain, their power can make kickback dangerous and more likely. There are low cost electric chainsaws. Not as powerful, but good enough and they start when you want them to. Given the cost of wood, the HF chainsaws are low cost enough to have a backup and treat as disposable. A pickup truck, a small size portable generator and you are in business. Were I younger, I would go hunting - Apple, Plum, Hornbeam, Hophornbeam, Honey Locust, Dogwood, Holly, even Buxus from old estates.

It is an excellent job that you have done in laying your deck. The darker raised strakes have an open grain that is similar to that of some Rock Elm that I have come across. It may want filling of the pores. I am not sure of the best way to do it though. The blond species looks great. Adding trunnels is a modeler's convention that I enjoy. On a real ship they would not be all that obvious. They were often covered with plugs of the same wood as the decking, with matching grain. The end grain of any species will usually be darker. If your trunnels were cored from the same blonde species, they would show. Using Pear, the contrast that comes from its end grain may be a more stark contrast than you really want. Just a thought before you step off that cliff.

Not much response, so far, so I will stand on a soap box, and speechify at bit: For Blender, first you discover what the program can do. Then you dig until you find out how to do it - which tools to use. Then you practice until you can do it. I think this works better by doing the reverse of the education model ( i.e. learning all of the tools before begin a project.) The education model also has you learning functions that you will never need or use. Learning each tool as the specific task that needs doing comes at you, has more immediate feedback. By being out of school, passing the tests and the course, is no longer a motivating force. The motivation comes down to getting satisfaction from learning and doing, what needs to be done. It comes down to picking the needed tutorials up from wherever they are found, rather than a coherent and well written book. 3D computer graphics programs are messy to learn. If you mean shipbuilding - this pretty much requires focusing of a specific ship or specific and narrow slice of time. There are monographs for individual vessels. There are reprints of books on shipbuilding that are of their time and place. They were written for a contemporary audience, to make money. They did not need to say that the work did not apply all that much to their grandfather's or even their father's ships. The purpose was progress and or advocacy of an individual bias, not history. The amount of information lost with the death of those who did it, because they either did not care to, or lacked the skills to, document it, is agonizing. The number of "books" that were even written and level of detail they contain builds over time from zero to covering only the major points. https://nautarch.tamu.edu/shiplab/index_03treatises.htm There are journal articles with shipbuilding information. There are the concentrated and rewritten explanations of what the original books described. Most only cover a limited slice of time (Dodds and Moore). To cover 1500 to 1860 in a single volume, the result would be very superficial, or if at real depth, require a forklift to move and a lifetime to write. If you wish to build a comprehensive library covering the subject broadly, it will be expensive and large. The difficulty in obtaining out of print volumes that were published recently will prove frustrating. On the plus side, more and more of the originals are becoming available in electron form, because they are free of copyright limits. The nature of this story is one of evolving tech, with many dead ends along the way. The mistakes could be and often were seriously consequential. This journey offers the chance for a glimpse of the challenges and methods of those for whom this was life or death. A more focused request may produce more helpful information.

Real Unimat have been out if production for a while now. Are you looking at a second hand machine? Of late, some real junk has been showing up with the Unimat name. Lots of plastic instead of cast Al.

I own the ANCRE monograph of Le Cerf. I worked on lofting the frames for POF. When I encountered the notches in the frames for the planks, the idea of doing that was more than I cared to attempt. The framing style displayed in the monograph is unique to say the least. I find the hull too small to offer much viewing joy if left unplanked. Starting with base of a fully planked hull, I opted to develop my theoretical plan of construction with all bends and scantlings that match a hull of that size in that era. The traditional method of clinker assembly has the lands cut from the planks. I speculate that full scale framing timbers would be a bit thick for a laser cutter to cut the notches. I would not attempt to cut the notches in the timbers of 100 frames by hand. Your work has shown me several things: The efficiency of using a laser cutter to produce the proper notches in the moulds on a POB build. That there is a method to the madness of the original builders in choosing the cut the lands into the much thicker framing instead of the thin planks. As long as the notches are done correctly, the actual planking is idiot proof. It is much more difficult to misplace a strake run. That the planking went much more quickly for you using notches suggests that it was also faster for the full size builders. Even if they did not have the glue setup time as a factor. Cutting the lands into each plank probably required more skill and experience as well as more time on the part of the shipwrights. I thank you for running the experiment. It was edifying and useful. I expect that it was unintended and frustrating on your part, but it was valuable for those of us who can learn from it. And, if the results of my searches have been anywhere close for what is available, you will find that Pear is a lot more difficult to find and expensive and Hornbeam near impossible on this side of the Atlantic.

Permanently filling the spaces above the wale added stability. Consider a keelson; and bilge riders at the head of futtock 1. The clamps will certainly secure things.

Stee, Your model does not look to be particularly affected by dust...yet. The main source for damage and destruction for any wooden ship model is in the failure to place it in a proper case. They can vary from an elegant piece of wooden furniture with glass or clear plastic sides and top to a glued plastic box. All choices will involve some cost. If you wish it to last, a case is pretty much necessary. Keep it away from direct sunlight and allow for filtered air exchange. It is a worthy icon for your grandfather's memory. Keeping it and keeping it safe would show great respect. He spent no little time and energy building it. If you do case it, attach a narrative with as much information about him and it as you can gather to the bottom. This way when this is passed on to a later generation, more than vague and mostly forgotten stories will be with it.

I think you got it right.

POF - the framing at higher scales seems to me to require a higher volume of wood than I would anticipate - if I did not know better from experience. You may come to understand what I meant by "Take out a loan and buy as much as you can." I hope that I am wrong about this in your case. If I calculated correctly, you are already $500 invested. The loss to kerf, really hurts. The waste from scroll cutting individual timbers can approach 50% or more. Mid ship is a lower loss to waste. It gets progressively more wasteful as the bow and stern are approached. If you assemble your frames by gluing up the plank stock in a horse shoe and scroll cutting the whole frame from a pattern on that, all bets are off on the degree of waste. That is in the WOW! zone. If you are not subject to compulsion about uniformity in materials used, it may not be painful for you to be ruthless. It would save your supply and your financial reserves if the Castello was reserved for only those regions where it will be on display, and an Acer species is used in the hidden regions. If you are one of the meshuga and intend to display the innards at a higher range scale, instead of planking the topside and decks completely, boy howdy on the volume used there! Anyway, I admire your optimism in expecting even a Swan class sloop to only cost you one billet.

I am not a kit builder, but a cursory inspection of web advertising for the English brig Mantua Golden Star produced a few red flags: The company description defines it as a plank-on-frame kit. It is plank-on-bulkhead. A very misleading indicator for its level of sophistication and leads to questions about basic company ethics. From a photo on the Mantua site, I count 8 moulds (bulkheads) - which could pose a problem as an adequate base for planking. The scale is 1:150. This is well into the miniature range. While ship plans can be scaled, the physical properties of wood cannot. The relatively wide spacing of the moulds could be mitigated somewhat because the wood will resist the more acute bending. There will be less of a problem with hollows., There will probably more of a problem with bulging. Pushing bulges in will be fruitless if there is nothing there to bond the plank to. Sanding a bulge down may remove too much wood. A layer of scrap wood can be scabbed on the inside between the moulds that will provide the removed substance. At 1:150 scale, the replication of smaller detail will require creativity in the choice of materials. Getting the rigging to scale will be a bear. Walnut has open pores. Not as extreme as Oak, but still there. The Lime surface and grain will scale better in appearance. The inherent fuzziness and friability will present more of a problem as show material in miniature. A brig is an excellent candidate for modeling at 1:48. Reasonable in size and open to detail. It is still not a size that can be pushed to the back of a book shelf though. A 1:150 brig will not require much room to display, but will only be 3.3% of the volume of the 1:48 version.

The billets do not appear to be wet enough to worry about fungus. I have never read of chemical fungicides being used anywhere around this. If the ends are not sealed, do that. Old paint can be used, but you do not wish to contaminate any of the wood with paint spread, you can melt a pot of candle wax and dip the ends in it. Definitely sticker the billets ~ 1/4" gap should do - If you are OCD, place stickers on the top layer and place a layer of heavy weight - like concrete building blocks. Where you store them - have good air flow.

Ummm. You might consider altering the title to: Bulkhead fairing techniques. Your present title is bait for POF scratch builders. Frames are a whole nuther thing. While they are just assembled frames, they are beveled as an isolate unit. A sanding drum with 60 grit or 80 grit does an efficient job for me, Fine tune with 220 grit. Once they are placed on the keel, the final fairing can get tricky - if the spaces between the frames are not filled with bracing. Moving the frames because of too much force being applied is not good. I have the spaces with temporary filler wood, so I can be vigorous about it. The same problem can occur with POB -it seems to me - in theory. The molds ( bulkheads ) are just hanging out there, if there is not bracing between them. Then there is the whole alternative of filling between the molds and thereby provide an adequate base for the planking.

Allan, Another member brought this up some time ago, apparently the advertised thread count in fabric is not all that straight forward in what it is describing. I find it confusing, but it may be that 500 or so may be the max available - for what we want it to mean. If I read it correctly a 1000 count is actually 500 threads, with each thread being two yarns twisted up. It is probably thicker. The variety of cotton used - some have longer fibers - and how much fractionation and purification of just the long fibers before twisting up may enter in to it.

Wahka_est, It is not so much that as it is the implication that Danish oil is somehow special. I have used Tung oil for the same purpose on a DIY Gerstner tool chest. It is that shellac will do what you want. With less time needed between coats and a better reverse gear. The depth can be fine tuned - more coats, more effect. The following are quotes from Google. No attribution, so no way to judge the accuracy. "Danish oil is a wood finishing oil, often made of tung oil or polymerized linseed oil, although there is no defined formulation so its composition varies among manufacturers. ... It is a "long oil" finish, a mixture of oil and varnish, typically around one-third varnish and the rest oil." "WATCO Danish Oil is a unique blend of penetrating oil & varnish hardens in the wood, not on the wood. Watco Danish Oil penetrates deep into wood pores to protect from within and to enhance the natural look and feel of the wood. It creates the rich, warm glow of a traditional hand-rubbed finish." This is obviously advertising copy. (seduction and manipulation) "Danish oil is easier to use than tung oil because it penetrates wood faster and it also dries faster than tung oil. On the other hand, tung oil cures to a very hard and beautiful, golden finish, which is often worth all the trouble of applying it."

Y.T., You must first please yourself. The grain contrast is a personal factor. If you are new enough at this to not realize what kit instructions are intended to ( can't find the verb ) as far as adherence to absolute historical accuracy, it is proper and expected that you follow them. If you are seduced further into all this, more knowledge and sophistication will follow. It is a natural and necessary progression. One common to all of us who did not graduate from The Webb Institute with a minor in the historical aspects of ship building (if they even have such a thing). The range of what all of this covers is not an impossible to encompass, open ended challenge. History has set limits. Loss of information has allowed for creativity and interpretative challenge. It is broad enough for a lifetime of interest. I would never enter or judge any sort of contest. So my opinion is not a factor. The key for me is to pick a goal and objective for just what is wished to be displayed and do the best to meet those targets. That has evolved quite a lot over time. For your next ship, if historical accuracy is a goal, look up the shift of the butt joints on deck planking that was actually allowed. There are very generally two schools of thought on deck and hull fastenings: none, because for the deck at least, they were covered with plugs of the same species placed with the same grain orientation and were thus invisible from any distance. Show, there was a rule about number and stagger pattern. There was a rule about diameter. They were not just used at the butt joins. I like them for two reasons. 1. The look. 2. Their locations can be used with pins and hitch chocks to hold and clamp until the Titebond dries. Then if brass pins are used, and brass trunnels wanted, nip and file. If bamboo trunnels, pull, broach, and glue in the bamboo. The pain is dealing with getting the pattern location correct on the loose plank.

What are the sources that even suggest that any sort of penetrating oil is commonly used on a ship model? A few use it. The approval and suitability for use on a ship model expressed in the way that you wrote this inquiry probably only exists in the minds of the owners and advertising department of the Watco Co. Watco = Danish Oil = $ Ship models seldom present a large enough flat surface to need or need to show the effects of depth with a clear finish. Unless your model is and is meant to be a toy, a high gloss finish is a scale inappropriate look. Most any water clear oil will give give wood a wet look. Most oils never dry and ruin the surface for any follow on treatment. Penetrating oils are a special case . As they are exposed to air, they undergo a chemical reaction (you hope) and cross link (polymerize). They become a clear "hard, maybe" solid. What they allow to be bonded to their surface is particular and specific to the type of oil used. Now, to back up a step or two and address your real problem: This is opinion, not law or rules: After you sand the deck, give it a light scraping with a sharp single edged razor blade. Vacuum and then wipe with 95% ethanol. I do not think you really want a deck on a ship model to express sharpness or contrast in the wood grain used. The goal is to use a wood species with no visible grain. Apply a coat of shellac - the primer coat (1st coat) is 50:50 shellac: 95% ethanol (shellac thinner). Follow with a coat of full strength shellac. Shellac just dries. There is no chemical reaction. The more layers, the more depth effect. ( French polish ) If anything plastic is not against Your rules, a wipe on polyurethane finish seems to be a popular final finish instead of or over the full strength shellac. But unless yours is a toy, not high gloss.

Scratch / scrape grooves for the bars on top of the frames and PVA glue a thin veneer layer over them? A mechanical hold should be enough, but I know that PVA will grip stainless steel pins in a drilled hole with enough of a bond that your bars would not survive the force required to break it.