Dan DSilva

Thanks. I've been using May as my main source too; that's what led me to raise the question. May provides some evidence (page 17) that longboats were hoisted in at least some of the time from the days of Nathaniel Butler (he uses the spelling "Boteler") onward. I can't answer whether the Prince in real life was designed from the start to have room on deck to do this, but if Airfix based their version on an admiralty plan, I would guess it was designed to carry much smaller boats if any and tow its longboat.

Thank you. Sorry, I should've included a photo. By the way, the boats seem undersized to me, even at the official 1:180 scale (and I think the ship itself is closer to 1:150, which would make the larger boats at 37.5mm less than 20 feet long). But the capstan is also amidships on this model and a boat of more than 50mm or so would interfere with it being turned.

I recently got an Airfix HMS Prince (1670) for my War of the Spanish Succession fleet. It has three boats, whose gunwales have rectangular notches for oarlocks, and I'm wondering whether this is accurate for the late 17th to early 18th century, or I should try to modify them by filling in the notches and adding thole pins. If I'm reading The Boats of Men-at-War (page 65) correctly, it seems to say that this style of lock was introduced with cutters, and other types of boats were modified in the late 18th century to eventually have the same style. Can anyone corroborate or disprove these claims?

Started the rigging chart. Meanwhile, I kitbashed a one-man dinghy. Unfortunately, the deck is already so crowded that there isn't anywhere for it to sit except on the main grating. That would require me to squeeze in a tiny hatch just ahead of the quarterdeck so the boat doesn't have to be hoisted every time someone needs to get below deck. Makes me wish the RN had adopted davits a hundred years earlier.

I had bought some very tiny white metal anchors from eBay over a year ago... and lost them. And they've never seemed to be restocked, so I have to make new ones myself. Unfortunately this means giving up a certain amount of authenticity because forming them to look really correct is impossible with the methods at my disposal. This especially shows with the head and ring, and the bulkiness of the stocks and stock bands. The shank starts as a piece of 3/64" brass rod, hammered flat. It takes only a few seconds to taper the flat. And literally one second over a blowtorch is enough to anneal it so it can be curled to form the head. I forgot to take process pics of making the rings, but they're 1/32" rod wound around another thin rod and then snipped. Pretty oversized, but I'm not sure I'd have been able to work with anything smaller. The crown is more 3/64" rod, hammered and tapered to form the flukes. Then they're curved with jewelry pliers, and the inside of the curve is sanded a little to prepare for soldering. Soldering was a delicate business. I had to make sure the shank and crown didn't shift at all relative to each other despite being so light that the flame alone was enough to blow them away, and having no clamping setup, and use the tiniest snippet of solder, flattened and laid on top with tweezers. Luckily it worked out and I decided to leave the excess solder in place to keep the connection well-buttressed. A thorough polish was not possible at this size, but I removed most of the scale and roughened the surfaces gently with 320g sandpaper, then "painted" with a few mistings of matte black metal primer. The stocks are just about 10mm and extremely delicate in the middle where they're grooved for the shank. Unable to think of how to mechanically attach the stocks to the shanks, I first tried to use epoxy, but found that in the absence of tiny clamps, all I could do was pinch the pieces together, and it wasn't possible to hold my hands perfectly still for long enough for the epoxy to cure. So I've instead just used superglue because it sticks much faster. They still came out uneven. After tapering and evening off the ends a little, I painted them and wound the thinnest black thread I could find around them to form the stock bands, held in place with more superglue. There are fibers sticking out from the thread and glue, but they're so tiny that I can only see them in extreme closeup photos like this. I don't relish going through this again. Luckily most of my planned future builds are large enough to use 20mm anchors, which are commercially available. I really need to start rigging! I've only gotten the deadeyes so far and just started mapping out everything else. But it's not easy to find rigging charts for a sloop-rigged boat of this period.

Hi again, Thanks! Student teaching went tolerably well, but studying for the Praxis exam was a slog. I finally found an official prep course which I'm finishing up soon. I have not made a lot of progress on this. It took a lot of casting around and experimentation to decide how to mount the boom and gaff, and it's still not what I'd call ideal, although I guess it looks passable for such a small scale. I'll probably try to figure out a different method for future projects. What I did was shave off a little from the sides, glue on a strip of card stock and wrap the ends with thread, reinforce it from inside with another strip of cardstock, cut out the middle to create the yoke shape and seal off the cut ends with a dab of glue and paint the yokes. Then I set the yokes around a scrap piece of bamboo skewer for support so they wouldn't bend or break as I poked holes through the ends with a pin. Finally I ran a piece of thread through the holes and a few seed beads to be the parrel beads. Unfortunately, getting the pin through the yoke without bending the yoke out of shape was extremely difficult. One of the holes on the boom's yoke tore open on one side. I was still able to mount it, but for some reason it's now rotating instead of being fixed -- which I guess is more realistic but it's not what I was going for. The gaff went off acceptably. However, I'm not sure I want to try this again. I might instead try making solid yokes out of wood or plywood. No idea how to add the parrel beads if I do it that way. The thread is held in place on one side with a knot preventing it from sliding through the hole. I put the thread through both holes but with plenty of slack so it could fit around the crow's nest; then I pulled it tight and secured both the yoke and the non-knotted end of the thread with superglue. Actually most of the mounting relies on glue. It strikes me as a very weak setup in general. Plus my smallest seed beads went missing, so I used larger ones, but could only fit three on the thread. In the meanwhile, I acquired some copper enamel paint and painted the minion drakes. Bit rough-looking in extreme closeup, but they're little more than half an inch long and my eyes aren't the sharpest, so to me they look good enough in person.

Reason I was leaning toward starting with round rod or dowel is that it's easier to get fast and consistent results than carving each oar individually when I have to turn them out by the dozens. I spent the afternoon thinking about how to expedite making more accurate ones, and right now the idea I have is starting with 1mm square dowel, reducing the shaft and handle with the draw plate, cleaning up with sandpaper, shaving the end of the shaft flat with a knife, and gluing it to a card stock blade. Quick proof of concept made from a toothpick and not to any particular measurements. Problems: The blade has a rib only on one face, and joins the shaft asymmetrically when viewed on edge. I tried cutting slots in the card stock with a Dremel cutoff wheel, but even with a thin wheel, the slots were too large. I suspect a wheel thin enough to make the size of slots I need would crack if I touched it, so right now I'm about ready to stop looking further and accept the drawbacks.

Looks good! Unfortunately I'm working in 1:128 scale.

Thanks Allan. I realize oars of the 18th and 19th century weren't simple cylinders, the trouble is I just don't see how it would be feasible to carve them in the correct shape at such a minuscule scale, and fancier equipment like a laser cutter is beyond my budget.

I got the Byrne draw plate, but somehow when I split bamboo skewers and draw them, they keep coming out crooked or curved. Maybe it's my technique, I dunno. What has worked is starting with WoodenModelShipKit 1mm ramin dowel. It's still tedious, and it'll cost more in the long run than skewers, but the results are more consistent than sanding by hand and drawing a yard at once makes it faster. I think on balance this is the most optimal way of doing it.

Never knew that! I wonder if that's why my eyes itch so much after I sand a lot of bamboo. Thanks everyone for the advice! I'll let you know how it goes.

Wow, this kicked off more discussion than I expected. When I mentioned "a draw plate made for wood" I was thinking specifically of this one from Micro-Mark, which says it "is designed specifically for shaving wood." It's more expensive than I'm used to paying for tools, but if I get much use out of it, it may be worthwhile. The projects I have planned will require well over a hundred oars, totaling about five meters worth of shafts. I wrote to Micro-Mark and they just got back to me yesterday. They were skeptical about whether bamboo would work with a draw plate, but given that other people have done so, I'll probably give it a try once I've saved up a bit. The Byrnes plate sounds good and is less than half the price of the Micro-Mark, but its holes start at a much smaller size. Using it with 1/8-inch skewers would require reducing them in diameter first. It could probably work with toothpicks, but since skewers are about five times as long as toothpicks, it would be more efficient to use skewers with a plate that's large enough for them, unless their length makes them prone to breaking when they start getting very thin.

Had another idea recently: Prior to starting this thread I had been making oar shafts out of disposable 1/8-inch bamboo grilling skewers by splitting them with an X-Acto and shaping with sandpaper. Aside from being tedious, it's tricky to get the resulting rod a consistent thickness and keep the cross section round when I'm bringing them down to half a millimeter, which is why I was asking about premade products, but bamboo is really an excellent material for oar shafts this small once it's prepared. Would a draw plate made for wood be able to reduce the thickness faster and produce better consistency? It sounds good in theory and there are a couple of these on the market, but I don't know whether they work with bamboo.

I'm starting full-time student teaching in a few days, so this'll probably be the last update for some months -- possibly the last of the year. The cheeks are a single layer of basswood. I briefly considered cardstock, but they need to be thick enough to support the trestle trees. Cheeks after cutting with the Dremel wheel and fine-tuning with sandpaper and files. Using the ratio barkeater provided for me here, I traced the top onto plywood. The trestle trees are basswood and the cross trees are very thin bamboo that I originally prepared for oars. Having filed slots for the shrouds to go through, it was now necessary to hold the masts in place while the glue dried -- luckily they're so close together that a single piece of cardstock was enough to do the trick. Marking the trestle trees for the cross tree notches. At this point I had the miserable realization that since I hadn't cut tenons on the masts for the cheeks to sit in, they would stand out far enough to block the slots for the shrouds. So I had to use a tiny needle file and riffler to widen the slots. Took a long time but I think this'll be sufficient. Not wanting to be bothered with a vise, I set the Dremel between some heavy books to hold it in place. Sloped sides on the top produced by rotating it in gentle contact with the sanding barrel. To get the right curvature for the rail, I rolled a small piece of cardstock around the top and traced it. This initial piece became the guide for tracing the final piece. I "broke" the rail by wrapping it around a pencil. Finding the right length to trim it to. I glued the rail down a little at a time so that it wouldn't spring away, similar to adding the deck rails. When I was done I found I'd somehow cut it too short, so an additional piece of card needed to be trimmed precisely to shape with my sharpest scissors to cover the gap. The ribs are a thin strip cut from a card with a desktop paper trimmer. Mast, fully assembled. With a solid hull you can mark the deck level on the mast by putting it in its hole and rotating it against a pencil point. Then it's time to paint. Current state of completion. The deck fittings still aren't glued down, that's why the grating, windlass and pawl are kind of jumbled.

Thanks, that looks like what I'm looking for! Topmast is a bit less than 53mm, at that ratio the top would be a bit less than 15mm. At 1:128 that makes it about 6 feet across. Bit cramped with the mast right in the middle of it, but I guess it would be wide enough to stand on.