Jaager

The material that binds wood fibers - lignin - is not water soluble. It is soluble in anhydrous ammonia, an explosive and dangerous industrial agent. It is not soluble in household (5%) or 20% ammonia. These just damage the planking. Heat will loosen lignin and allow for more bending. Water on the surface of the wood - when contacted by a dry heat source - becomes steam and penetrates the wood with more efficiency than just dry heat alone. A microwave and wet paper towel wrapping, or direct steam will work. Soaking in hot water works - but sort of reverses the original seasoning process a bit. Ideal is to let the bent wood dry in its future conformation. If you dry in an over bent conformation, try to keep that at a slight amount.

About the hull - the basic method - explained in Deane's Doctrine - involves the heavy use of arcs. Because pieces of circles make up the cross sections and transitions between them to try to get a reasonable run along the hull make up the waterlines, there is a basic sameness in the shape below the main wale. If you can get lines for a ship about the same age and size, they can be scale adjusted to the beam, depth, and length to your ship. The result would likely be "close enough for government work".

Zero information re: the actual models,, but there are two books Prisoner-of-war ship models, 1775-1825 Hardcover – 1973 by Ewart C Freeston Prisoner of War: Bone Ship Models - Treasures from the Age of Napoleonic Wars Paperback – June 1, 2016 by Manfred Stein

Pardon the broken record on this, The logo does not look familiar, so this may not be the kit. There was a kit for HMS Prince where the historical keel length was used for length of the whole model keel. At the time of HMS Prince the given keel length was "touch" - which is a bit shorter. It made the open main deck a bit crowded and the overall hull a bit squat looking. A repair would be easy = patch in a additional length at the join and duplicate the dead flat mould.

The Index for NRJ vol.25 1979 has a reprint of data from Secretary's Monthly Letter #6 July 1948 Specifications for oar of various boats of theUSN for the year 1900 there is a diagram and a table. There are 15 data points for each oar and 10 different oars. I trust that it is a part of CD 1 It may produce an anacronism for an earlier time, but at least the oar would be a real oar.

They are permanent blocks fixed into the bulwarks. Old Ben just did not detail the sheave in fig. B-5. He is showing you that the top is flush with the bottom of the rail. I think at least one is for a main sail sheet. If you do not add sails, there may not be a line that uses them on your model. With the attention this causes, I am thinking about the physics and that in this instance, the force on the sail is partially transferred to a more substantial part of the bulwark than a pin rail.

A common way to become overwhelmed and bail on this whole endeavor is to start with too advanced a project. I am very old school, so grain of salt and all that: You might take a look at MS Phantom -- Solid hull - it has beautiful lines. A down size is that it is 1:96. That is the inflection point for entry into the miniature. That is where the physical limitations of wood enter into a simulation of components instead of replication. For a first model, that is not really a factor to worry about. You could also use a really thin veneer and try planking above the copper.

Scantlings of Royal Navy Ships should provide the dimensions for most everything. 50 gun 1719 is one of the entries. Although frigates were just evolving, I am thinking that a 50 would not offer much more fire power than 44 gun frigate, yet with the extra deck - be slower, and more cumbersome. It might be a better home for an admiral, but that is a self serving reason to build a 50 or 60.

I made a machine using NRG plans - in the '70's ? The platten was Hard Maple - The square stock was glued to a 1/2 cold rolled steel rod and the turned by a professional woodworker. I did not and do not have a full size lathe. At the time, the only media that I knew of was the 11x9 hardware store sheets, so I had the platten sized to take that = 11 inches long and 9 inches circumference. I used Weldwood contact cement. It was/ still is a bear to change. Mineral spirits and naptha denature it, but the paper backed media -- awful to remove. I have since discovered cloth backed sanding media - it is much better. Do over = I would keep the diameter the same - I would make the platten 12" I would allow for 2 inch thick stock. My imagination sees a thick platten as producing a better surface. Why 12" ? Klingspor makes long rolls of open coat Al oxide in 3" and 4" widths. With 12 inches, I could have 4 inches of 80 grit, 4 inches of 120 grit, and 4 inches of 220 grit. A rubber platten is almost certain to be out of round. Commercial sleeves - vampires on your wallet. A soft platten - Velcro = heartache. I am pretty sure that if you use cloth backed and coat both the media and the platten with rubber cement - it should hold. It has a thinner/solvent and it is a magnitude easier than contact cement to use - easier application - a no contest for removal.. You will need to buy it in quarts. A dust hood is vital. I made one. It is an open box with a 2.5" shop vac connection on the top. I made it by Titebond III gluing 3 layers of Amazon box cardboard together and using that for the 4 sides and top. It is good quality cardboard and with two layers of PVC - it is strong and light weight. The inside corners have 1/4" x 1/4" Pine sticks and also at the top to take the screws for the shop vac hose socket. Covered the outside with duct tape. Keeping it in place and having no weight/ force from the vac hose is the most difficult chore. Jim Byrnes unit is 6" - friction clamp - easy to change -- Klingspor 3" two pieces

Quick and dirty: Woodcraft lists an outlet in Phoenix They have Walnut veneer. Can be cut with steel straight edge and a sharp knife. There are hardwood stores in Phoenix - if you have the tools to handle dimensional stock. Walnut can be a beautiful wood for furniture or gun stocks. It is relatively hard, tight, holds an edge. It has one bothersome characteristic - it has open pores. Not the best look when scaled down. A tight grained closed pore species can be used and made to match Walnut by using an aqueous or alcohol aniline dye of the desired color. Not a stain - which is a surface semi transparent paint - a peritrating dye.

I know your sentiment . I am facing the same thing. At 1:60 - a two or three decker absorbs a lot more wood than I had imagined for the framing. At larger scales the superior characteristics of true Boxwood are not really necessary. Less expensive and replaceable domestic species will suffice. At 1:96 or smaller, the Boxwood would really shine and your supply would go a long way -- ( but the amount lost to kerf and chips becomes a larger fraction ). But miniature is a whole nuther thing.

Thanks. Good to know that the subject of my complaint is valid and was noticed. The bad part is that the basic hull can stand for Hebe and more than a few more French 18's and HMS Leda and a large number of RN sisters, including HMS Shannon and two that are still with us. A second supplement with the correct lines and all the variations in the derivatives may find a market. But it might give birth to kits and any scratch versions would no longer be unique. Since L'Egyptienne looks to be correct for what I need, I look forward to exploring her.

Gerard, Does this include a classic Body Plan with lines inside the planking? My complaint with the early work of your former associates regarding La Venus is that that Body Plan is outside planking.

Look in a fabric store or at skeeter netting or look for used woman's hats from the 40's and 50's or old style hair nets.

Roger, Are you positive your supply is Buxus simpervirens? There are other Buxus species. The stuff from Turkey and the logs from the New England supplier are a different species. Brittle is not something I would attribute to Buxus simperverins- although as far as bending, no way it comes close to Holly - a champ or Pear. With it being so scarce, I would not sacrifice it to a component that needed bending anyway. I have a supply from a supplier on the Baltimore harbor in 1972 and a couple of small pieces from an ornamental plant. The latter has much tighter grain. Way back when, the free size was called Bermuda Box. As I said before, someone should plant a wood lot of the tree size variety/cultivar so that their great grandchildren would have a supply.

Jason, Who is your Castillo supplier?

It would be interesting to have a timeline for the history of sheet glass manufacture. When was glass of X x Y dimension economically available. There must have been a time when skylights for officers' country was open and needed solid shutters for rain and cold. The bars would keep crew from plunging thru or breaking a limb.

The only rebuttal to this is La Venus - is of Hebe class and was of the Revolution period and was the basis of a huge number of RN frigates extending past 1815. My complaint is the monograph et al. = there is no Body plan of just the stations inside the planking - even the supp. plans set while having lofted frames, which is fine for most, just duplicates the original monograph at a different scale - the RN take off = Leda needs a ton of work because time has been unkind. The 74 Gun Ship is the Temeraire class - also Revolutionary not ANCRE but Delacroix - Commerce de Marseille - 118 gun big boys of both periods.

A complete guess here: POB, kit, subject that is probably one of the three most overdone : Victory, SOS, Constitution Probably the same as the original kit. I costed out the price of a finished model, if I based it on the $60/hr I was getting from my day job a decade ago - a billionaire would not pay that much. On a return per time expended, this is a charitable exercise at best.

In this situation, I would hold the money until I progressed in a build to a place where a specific tool is needed and then buy it. If you have a large budget - buying tools on spec, or collecting anything that could possibly be of use, is a no risk, no hardship behavior. If the expenditure has an effect, that is not a sustainable aspect.

Will it scale well, or does it neon flash its presence? Does it scale well? If it has closed pores and an indistinct variation between Spring and Summer rings? If to your eye, a cut and fine sanded surface would show well on a model, it would be a waste to hide it as a carved hull - if it is difficult to source. If if fails these tests, then carving a hull using it would work, if the Database is correct about its compatibility with wood glue. It is in the Lime, Spruce, Fir, White Pine, Aspen range of hardness. It should carve easily.

The last picture = is likely a first rate or ship expected to be a flagship. The change is at an entry "door". Only the "plebs" would be using the steps above the door. There is even a wider step at the level of the upper gun deck for those who use the gun port at that level instead of climbing to the rail. The steps for the fat old men (flag oficiers) are wider and more uniform.

Building codes specify stairs have specific height and depth ratios - I think our brains quickly adapt to and expect a rhythm when climbing a manufactured apparatus. The "bulge" at a wale would be easier to adapt to than a difference in step depth or distance between steps. Since most vessels had significant tumble home, the body contact with the higher steps would signal where a foot should go.

Amazon sells as an example yros 45-21270 High Speed Steel Wire Gauge Drill Bit No.70 #12 full range of wire gauge - not seeing metric

The plans in HIC books are for sale from The Smithsonian. For the Antebellum USN many/most of the vessels designed as schooners or brigantines were rigged as brigs. The rig was a bit fluid. It appears to me that you could pick most any brig, brigantine, or 2 masted schooner hull plan and mast and rig it as a hermaphrodite brig. It would be helpful to give your model a fictional name, to avoid integrity problems.