Doreltomin

The kit of Trumpeter is very well molded.

 I will make use of the upgrade sets of Shipyard works and Eduard.
These books give lots of information but you can also find lots on the web
 

Looks great Eberhard, I like the methodological approach you are taking with this little gem.
 
Glad to hear you had a great Christmas and wishing you only the best in health and prosperity for 2026.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Thanks again for your moral support, verbal and via the buttons !
 
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A Mystery Resolved
 
When constructing the hull of the Rahschlup, it bugged me that there was no obvious way to free the deck quickly from larger amounts of water taken over in bad weather. The Jacht/Jagt-type vessels often have a gap between the covering board and lowest bulwark plank, but on all illustrations of Rahschlup-type vessels no such gap was visible. Freeing ports, as on modern ships came into use only later and the lead-lined gutters would not be sufficient.
 
Then I scanned through the images of the restoration project (https://www.jensine.dk, but the link does not seem to work at the moment) for the Danish Jagt JENSINE (1852) for a different reason and two images caught my eye:

 They show that sections of the lowest bulwark plank are actually hinged and can swing out. In calm weather they are secured with latches. Subsequently, I noticed similar features on other restored vessels.
I am not sure that this is an ideal solution for securing, as the wedges would need to be removed individually and kept for re-use. Also, the latch is attached to the plank section and could get caught between the plank and the covering board. I think a solution with a hook fastened to the stanchion that engages a staple in the plank would be a better solution.
 
How to represent such parts now in 1/160? Producing the hinges will be relatively simple, although they will be tiny, but the hooks is another matter.
 
For the hinges I took 2 mm long lengths of 0.1 mm tinned copper wire that was squeezed flat on my repurposed watchmaker jewelling tool to a predetermined thickness. These jewelling tools have a micro-meter stop that allows to very precisely set the distance between the anvil and the stamp. By squeezing, the ends of the flattened wire become rounded, which suited well the purpose. There was also a slight dimple in the anvil from the turning, which resulted in a slight boss in the middle of the strip to simulate the actual hinging mechanism. The ‘hinges’ were glued on with varnish.
 
The latches are another matter and had to be much simplified. A double L-shape was bent into a short length of 0.1 mm tinned copper wire to simulate the hook and then one end was squeezed flat to represent the part that would have been screwed to the bulwark. These tiny pieces were then glued with varnish to the lowest bulwark planks and to the bulwark stanchion.
 
I decided to make only every second space between the bulwarks ‘swinging out’ and scored the lowest plank on the outside lightly to mark these sections.

Unfortunately, these parts are so tiny, that they are almost impossible to photograph, unless I use my macro-photography set-up and then they would probably look discouragingly crude …
 
To be continued …

Thank you, in fact, I made this tiny 1/350 sideproject version of her for fun a few years ago and came out fair enough.

As for the hull: 

This painting faithfully follows the brent plan and shows her original, propably temporary, rig, with her figurehead on the right.
 

 
This contermporary (1828) depiction of he is extremely interesting, showing her rig as it most probably was when in commision in greek waters, with a bonaventure mizzen added, and all masts converted to fore and aft, logically, as she was steaming often against or near the wind. 

Adding the gunports using a pattern to follow the curve of each hull line above the main deck. 

Shaping the hull: 

Here she is along with much larger frigate Hellas

The above contemporary drawing shows the ship in full sail, yet, I am not sure if she ever put to sea. Possibly between 1845-1855 (?) This is actually a rather important detail for the model, but lacking any other info, the painting is what we have. Her end is not recorded, technically part of the fleet untill the 1870s, but going through 1870s-1900s photos of Poros and Salamis naval bases, I think I spotted her: 

Good evening all! So I have this idea to create a series of  1/144 scale models of greek 19th century ships (along with some other older types of vessels related to the history of Crete specifically). The brig "Ares" was the first of the project to finish. I'll start a thread for each one of them, with a goal to finish this collection in about 2027-2028. 
 
This thread is about the corvette "Loudovikos", named after Ludwig I of Bavaria, father of the first king of modern Greece, Otto von Wittelsbach. 
Built between 1837-1838, in Poros naval shipyard, designed by Georgios Tombazis, she was the first proper warship designed and built in Greece, and at 1000 tons, the largest domestically built warship for... 158 years until a MEKO200 frigate in 1996 (!) Her size was considered too big to operate for the impoverished nation, and she was placed immediately in ordinary. Nevertheless, a few year later, in 1845, the greek (Hellenic) Naval Academy was founded as a naval training school on board the corvette. So her history is quite significant.

The model in the condition she currently is.

Thanks again to all for their encouragement !
 
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Some small progress in the true and literary sense of the word:

Bilge-pump
 
Although not drawn in the original drawings, the ship must have had at least one bilge-pump. Such pumps would be logically located at the lowest part of the hull, usually somewhere close to the mast. As its location is not marked on the drawings, this is a bit of guess-work.
While Downton-pumps or similar existed already, when the Rahschlup was designed, they were comparatively expensive items. As the ship was built in a rather economically marginal context, it is more likely that a traditional wooden pump was installed, that could also be built and maintained with local materials and by local craftsmen, such as a blacksmith. Nicely rendered drawings for such pumps can be found, for instance, in the Danish naval yard archive.

Example for a bilge-pump from the former Danish naval yard (extract from G-2357-09)
 
The trunk would have been fashioned from a single tree, typically elm, that was bored out with the aid of spoon- or canon-drills in a sort of primitive boring-lathe. Iron bands kept it together and served as attachment points for the lever. 
 
https://youtu.be/pj-XKqW29XE?si=9Q8RTsXOMxMuPPVN 
Example for drilling of wooden pipes.
 
I made a rough sketch to fix the dimensions and settled on a height of 4 mm and a diameter of 1 mm, which would be 64 cm and 16 cm on the original respectively. The body was turned from a short length of acrylic rod, leaving the future bands as proud rings.
The mechanism is composed of four lengths of 0.2 mm tinned copper wire. The wire was first bent to shape and flattened at the appropriate places with a special kind of flattening pliers. Initially, I intended to solder the parts together, but they were just too small and flimsy, so I settled on cementing them together with lacquer. The procedure is a bit difficult to document photographically while doing it, so there are only pictures of the finished product.

The completed bilge-pump
 
I am afraid the translucent pump does not show very well in the photograph, but I generally only paint everything at the very end to avoid damage during repeated handling.
 
To be continued …

Hawse-pipes
 
Hawse-Pipes
 
As I was dealing with fairleads through the bulwark, I decided to continue with the hawse-pipes as well. After some deliberation, I also decided to go fully ‘plastic’. In the past I fashioned the hawse-pipes and the entry-/exit-reinforcements from brass tubes with rings soldered on. 

Set-up in the horizontal milling machine for drilling the hawse-pipes
 
Here the actual pipes are very short and go through a massive layer of polystyrene. So, a separate pipe is not really needed. For drilling the 1 mm holes, the model was set up on the horizontal milling machine. The reinforcement rings were cut from 0.5 mm diameter polystyrene rod (or perhaps rather wire). To this end, the polystyrene wire was wound around a 0.9 mm drill-shaft, which was easier than expected, and then the springiness was taken out by slightly tempering it at 100°C with my hot-air soldering gun. From this spiral, the rings were cut.
 
The rings then were sanded flat on one side and cemented to the bulwark outside and inside. A first try with polystyrene cement was not very successful, as the ring began to spread open upon contact with the solvent. I then used the artificial-nail cement, composed of acrylic solution and cyanoacrylate.
 
After the cement had cured, the hole needed to be bored out again and smoothed.

Outboard view of the hawse-pipes

Inoard view of the hawse-pipes
 
As sobering these close-ups are with respect to cleanliness and crispness of the execution of the work are, they also show strikingly, where touching-up is really needed – not something that one sees very easily even using magnifying glasses.
 
To be continued …

This is better. The masts have been lengthened and the fighting tops have been reduced in size.

 
I'd like to depict the sail as billowing as Brueghel did.
I've used Bible paper for other models at this scale. However, it's difficult to curve it in two directions. Perhaps someone here has a tip on how I could create such a billowing, curved sail.
 
best regards
Alvb

Cleats and Bollards
 
In addition to belaying pins, also various types of cleats are distributed around the ship. Their type and location had to be reconstructed from various sources, such as models and early photographs. On paintings of such vessels, they are generally not visible.
 
The first type concerns very large cleats that stretch across two bulwark stanchions. They are used for belaying heavy ropes, such as the main sheet. If they have a fairlead in middle, they also serve as mooring cleats.

Mooring cleat (old photograph from unidentified book)
 
The photograph was imported into my 2D CAD program (EazyDraw) and the outline traced and scaled to size. This served as the basis for the laser-cutting file. Material for two cleats was cut. The cleats are laminated from four layers of Canson-paper (if I had a more powerful laser, of course, they could have been cut from some 0.6 mm thick material in one go). The resulting part was finally filed to shape. The fairlead is a copper rivet.

The completed mooring cleats
 
I am not sure, whether the pipe of the fairlead is in some way supported in the space between the cleat and the bulwark planking. I have not been able to find any photographs that show this detail. However, for practical reason I inserted a square piece of polystyrene with an appropriate hole drilled through. This allows me to insert a shortened hollow rivet from each side and hide the seam conveniently. As the cleats will be represented in varnished wood, as can be seen on the above photograph and various models, it allows me to locate the cleats after all the painting is done.

Fairleads from the outside
 
Looking at the close-up photographs, I think the fairleads should have been turned a bit smaller on the outside diameter, but I am going to leave them like this. I also realised that my planking looks pretty awful and needs to be worked over …
 
There are also several heavy cleats needed to belay for instance the backstays or the ropes used to secure the anchors. They are of a type that seems to have fallen out of modern use, namely half-cleats combined with a bollard

Combination of bollard and half-cleat (old photograph from unidentified book)
 
The shape was developed in the 2D CAD program and measurements for the machining derived from this. The rough shape was milled out of some 1 mm x 3 mm polystyrene profile. In fact the enveloppe is only 1 x 1.5 mm, but the additional material is needed initially to be able to hold the part in the vice. 

Milling the rough shape of the bollard/half-cleat combination

Milling the rough shape of the bollard/half-cleat combination – close-up
 
The final shape was given with the aid of various metal- and diamond-files and scraping to remove the fuzz from filing. I am using for this a ‘French’ type of pin-vise, on which I replaced the brass jaws with ones made from wood.
One should note that, as they will attach to bulwark stanchions, their back has to be slightly curved.

Filing a cleat to shape

Roughed-out cleat (top) and finished cleat (bottom)
 
To be continued …

That's some fine micro work, Eberhard. 👍

Thank you very much for the kind words and the many 'likes' 👍🏻
 
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Pin-rails 2
 
As can be seen on drawings and old photographs, the pin-rails often rested on consoles attached to the bulwark stanchions for added strength. As about a dozen were needed, they were ‘mass-produced’ from a shaped styrene profile.

Milling the profile for the consoles to support the pin-rails

The shaped profile for the consoles
 
A 1.5 mm x 1 mm rod was stuck to a small ‘wax-chuck’ on the micro-milling machine with doubled-sided mounting tape. The rod was then oriented exactly parallel to the axis of the cross-slide and a hollow milled with a 1.5 mm ball-end burr.

Slicing off consoles with the micro-guillotine
 
The edges were rounded with a fine file. This profiled rod was then transferred to the newly built micro-guillotine and slices of 0.7 mm thickness cut off. These miniature consoles then were stuck to the underside of the pin-rails. Once painted, they will be attached as units to the bulwarks.

Collection of consoles

Consoles cemented to a pin-rail
 
Micro-Guillotine
 
The micro-guillotine was constructed around a part-machined cast-iron blank for a staking tool I found on ebay. Originally, I intended to fabricate all parts from steel, but I could not obtain a suitable blank for the rotating table and neither had the right steel bars in stock. So, for the time being at least, the parts were fabricated from 3 mm ABS sheet that I happened to have. 

 
The cutting blade is a shortened chisel-shaped scalpel-blade. It is set into an exactly fitting slot in the 6 mm steel runner and secured with a steel ring. The knob on the runner is an old bakelite instrument knob. The 6 mm wide blade restricts the cutting capacity to 3 mm for 90° cuts and correspondingly less for cuts at an angle. This is a conscient restriction, as this tool is really meant to only cut parts up to 2 mm by 2 mm cross-section. 

 
To cut at an angle, the plate is turned, rather than the cutter as in other designs. The narrow gap between the guides ensures that also very small parts can be cut. Their length can be set by the adjustable brass stop.

 
To be continued …

Work was been interrupted again, this time by some business travel to Tallinn for a few days, where I had also the opportunity to visit the Estonian Maritime Museum. Unfortunately, I came back from there with a sort of bronchitis that bogged me down for a couple of weeks ...
 
Pin-rails
 
Another delay in actual shop-work was caused that I first had to work out were the pin-rails would go and how many pins they have to have to provide the necessary belaying points.

Drilling the pin-rails using the micro-mill as a coordinate drilling machine
 
The pin-rails are 2.2 mm wide strips cut from 0.8 mm thick acrylic sheet. The holes were drilled using the micro-milling machine as a coordinate drill to get the distances right. The outer edges of the pin-rails were rounded as can be seen on many prototype photographs. The inner edges were notched for the bulwark stanchions on the filing-machine.

Cutting the notches for the stanchions on the filing-machine

Cutting the notches for the stanchions on the filing-machine

Collection of pin-rails

Pin-rails loosely attached at their designated location
 
To be continued …

Hello Eberhard,
I was a little surprised when I read that you also cited F. A. Coste as a source.
But, as always, excellent research.

Thank you very much for the continued interest in this project 👍🏻
 
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Developing the Rigging Warrant
 
It may seem strange to talk about the rigging warrant at this stage, but as much of the supporting fittings have to be reconstructed from sources and certain fittings, such as pin-rails or cleats, have to be put into place before painting, now is the time to develop at least an outline for it.

Spar-dimensions as per table on original drawing by Möller
 
The original drawings comprise a sail-plan and a spar-list with dimensions, which is a good start. However, as this is the builder’s and not a modeller’s plan, there are no details on the actual execution of the rig. These have to be reconstructed from sources from around the middle of the 19th century, notably
 
BIDDLECOMBE, G. (1848): The Art of Rigging.- 155 p., Salem, Ma. (Reprint 1990 by Dover Publication, New York).
 
BOBRIK, E. (1848): Handbuch der praktischen Seefahrtskunde, Schiffgebäudekunde, Zurüstungskunde, Manövrierkunde, Ankerkunde, Tafeln zur Schifferkunde.- 604 p. + plates, Leipzig (reprint 1978 by Horst Hamecher, Kassel).
 
Costé, F.-A. (1829): Manuel de Gréement ou l’art d’équiper les vaisseaux et autres batimens de mer, de tout ce qui est nécessaire a leurs mouvements.-  282 p., tables, Paris (Dezauche).
 
Jaÿ, . (1860): Études sur le Greément d’après les réglement du 25 avril 1857, révisé en 1858.- Atlas du Génie Maritime, 2éme Serie, Annexe No. 1: 55 pl., Paris (Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies).
 
KIPPING, R. (1853): Rudimentary Treatise on Masting, Mast-Making, and Rigging of Ships.- 150 p., London (John Weale).
 
MIDDENDORF, F.L. (1903): Bemastung und Takelung der Schiffe.- 401 p., Kassel (reprint 1977 by Horst Hamecher). – this is a bit late, but has useful tables with dimensions of parts
 
While these works contain many useful tables and sometimes beautiful detailed drawings, I realised that they are of limited use for this project as they mainly deal with larger ships. Only occasionally they give information on rigging practice for single-masted vessels. In some cases information on the foremast and bowsprit/jibboom of topsail-schooner was useful, as their rigging layout is similar.  
 
The popular secondary literature on, e.g. British or French naval cutters, that have at a first glance a similar sail-plan, also is only of limited value, as they typically have a running bowsprit, and not a fixed one with jib-boom.
 
So, much had to be interpolated, also from secondary sources covering earlier or later periods.
 
I also studied numerous images of German, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian sloops operating in the Baltic with respect to the arrangement of stays, shrouds, backstays, topmast-shrouds, -stays, -backstays, and the bowsprit/jibboom. A considerable variability in layouts was observed.
 
Although the models of sloops and topsail-schooners in the Altona Museum (Hamburg) were built and rigged at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, the model builders included older professional riggers, who presumably were aware of the earlier practices. These models give a good overview of the variability of rigging layouts and the supporting structures at the hull and on the deck.
 
With this information it has been possible to develop a draft warrant for the standing and (part of) the running that will help to dimension and locate the necessary pin-rails, rigging cleats, bollards, etc.

Reconstructed dimensions for the standing rigging

Reconstructed dimensions for (part of) the running rigging
 
To be continued …

The shipyard had been closed for much of August, only the drawing office stayed open to prepare work for autumn ...
 
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Anchor-winch 4
 
The remaining item for the winch is the pawl-bit against which also the bowsprit rests. It is surprisingly thin, only 240 mm square, according to the original drawing, which conveniently translates to 1.5 mm on the model.
 
A strip a tad wider than 2 mm was cut from a scrap of 1.5 mm thick acrylic glass. Care was taken to cut it parallel to a manufacturing edge, which is clean and square. In this way, only one edge needed to be machined and the manufactured edge provided a good datum for this.
 
The pawl rest in a cast-iron U-shaped frame that is bolted to the front of the post (updating the design a bit from the older style wooden pawls drawn in the original drawing). Rather than adding this part to the post, I decided to mill it from the solid. Hence the 2 mm strip.
 
Originally, I intended to drill 0.15 mm holes for the axes of the pawls, but my drills turned out to be too short for that. This would not be really necessary at this scale anyway, but would have later, once a wire was inserted, facilitated the positioning of the pawls. I have to eyeball it now.

Milling the groove into the ‘cast-iron’ frame
 
The post was milled to size, letting material for the frame for the pawls standing. The shape of the frame was then milled out and the ends rounded with a safe-edge file. In the final machining step, the groove was cut.

Shaping the head of the pawl-bit
 
I don’t have square collets (I plan to make one day a set of square insert collets for precisely holding square stock), so a round one had to make do for the next operation, namely shaping the head of the pawl-bit with different burrs. Because of the relatively soft acrylic glass and with light cuts, this is not a problem.
 
Shaping the head of the pawl-bit
 
The pawls will be short lengths of 0.2 mm x 1 mm styrene strips, but will be made only later, when everything comes together so as not to lose those tiny bits.
 
To be continued …
 

Thanks again for your interest !
 
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Anchor-winch 3
 
The winch drums were fashioned from 3 mm Ø round acrylic rod. Each side was built up from two pieces. The problem here were the square holes for the handle-bars. In principle, one could cross-drill two holes and file the square, but at 0.5 mm x 0.5 mm this would have been quite a challenge. There would be other options, such as broaching, but this requires specialised tools.
The simplest thing is to divide the drum into two parts, to slot the end of one part, cement the two parts together and one ends up with perfect square holes.

Set up for slotting the ends of the winch drums

Slotting the winch drums
 
To this end, a piece of rod was faced on both ends, and drilled 0.5 mm for the axle. It was then transferred to the dividing head on the micro-milling machine and the ends were slotted 0.5 mm deep with a 0.5 mm circular saw. Finally, a round disc of the same diameter was cemented to the end, leaving two perfectly square cross-holes.

Milling the eight sides of the winch drums
 
In the next step, the axle of the dividing head was tilted by 1.5° for milling the eight sides of the drum that is slightly conical. The drum is bound by iron hoops at both ends. These were generated by milling the drum to 0.2 mm diameter above the target dimensions. Then, the diameter was reduced by these 0.2 mm, leaving two ‘bands’ of 0.3 mm width and 0.1 mm thickness at both ends.

Close-up view of milling the eight sides of the winch drums
 
The thinner ends of the drum were faced off on the lathe to the correct length and then the drum halves parted off to the correct length.
 
The spill-heads were done in the same way, but are cylindrical (or eight-sided prisms), rather than conical (or eight-sided truncated pyramids). A smaller burr had to be used, as the distance between the reinforcement bands is only 1 mm. Before parting-off, the outside ends were slightly dished with a round-burr in the lathe tailstock.

Milling the spill heads
 
For the ratchet wheel a short length of 3 mm acrylic rod was turned down to 0.1 mm above the target diameter of 2.0 mm. The geometry for milling the ratchets was worked out on the computer. I arrived at ten ratchets 0.2 mm deep (= 32 mm on the prototype, which appears reasonable). In watchmaking there are special ratchet-wheel milling cutters that can also cut curved teeth, but I don’t have any, so I had to make do with a dovetail burr, which is good enough, as the ratchet wheel does not need to be functional. Also, two 0,2 mm thick discs as flanges were parted off.

Milling the ratchet wheel
 
Unfortunately, these transparent parts are difficult to photograph and, indeed difficult to see during machining. A first coat of paint will eventually show any errors …

The parts of the anchor winch made so far assembled

The anchor winch at its future location
 
To be continued …

On YouTube:
 
 
 

6. and now I am putting all the parts of the chimney together