SJSoane

Thanks, Gary and Mark, I had never noticed that before. Very interesting detail. I looked around some more to remember why I thought the Bellona had angled and hooked spirketting. I found it in Brian Lavery's Anatomy of the Ship for the Bellona, page 46. It is redrawn from a drawing of the Arrogant 1761, just a year after the Bellona, and also designed by Bellona's designer, Thomas Slade. I looked for the original online at the National Maritime Museum site; it lists the drawing, but there does not seem to be a scanned image available. So I guess I will work with Lavery's redrawing. Would have been fun to try something different.... Best wishes, Mark

Thanks, Gary, that look great. I haven't noticed those keyed joints in the spirketting before, as opposed to sloped scarphs like in the beam clamps. I had it in my mind that the Bellona would have sloped scarphs, but for the life of me I don't know where I got that idea since there are no Bellona drawings showing this detail. I have a jig for steam bending the planks outboard at the bow; I'll try it for inboard as well and then adjust accordingly if there is too much springback. Best wishes, Mark

HI Gary, I was looking back in your build to see how you did the spirketting on the gun deck, but I can't seem to find it. I am beginning to think about doing this once I finish the channel wales, and you have always been an exceptionally good guide for me! I am particularly interested in the bow, and how to steam bend those into place. Do you recall what you did there? Mark

Thanks so much, Michael and Greg. I am sure I would have been fired many years ago if I was an apprentice to an 18th century ship model builder. Can't earn my keep! I had to spend a night in a hotel earlier this week, and took the opportunity to try making a maquette of the sculptures on the stern of the Bellona. Even though I made this at twice the scale of the model itself (3/8" = 1'-0" instead of 3/16" = 1'-0"), I still did not have clay modeling tools small enough; and the clay was too soft and deflecting. So another round needed with better tools and clay. But this did give me a sense of what it is like to shape in 3 dimensions, and to see the figure itself in 3 dimensions. An entirely different world for me! Best wishes, Mark

Hi Gary, Happy birthday! Your arrangement for the transom at the stern looks very convincing. Well done. I will not complain any more about how tedious is is to plank, when I see those crooked hanging knees! Beautiful craftsmanship, as usual. Best wishes, Mark

Thanks, druxey, I am going to break out the clay today and see what is what with this maquette process! I forgot to attach the following image yesterday, showing the first strake of the channel wale complete on the starboard side. Work progresses on the second strake on the port side. Mark

Gaetan, Beautiful, finely crafted, a work of art! You are an inspiration. Mark

Some other life activities got in the way of the model for a while. I am grabbing a few moments in the shop from time to time, and here is an update. Planking continues, and I am refining how to do this as efficiently as possible both for time and for materials consumed. I started ripping planks off a blank wide enough for later spiling of the individual planks. But this turned out to waste a lot of wood that was initially cut too wide for the final plank. So I then made manila file templates for each plank in the second strake of the channel wales: Then I laid these out on the blank port and starboard of each piece next to each other to avoid different curves wasting more wood (I will flip the starboard ones when fitting): These are now cut out on a scroll saw, and ready for sanding to size and fitting: Meanwhile, I have been thinking about the carvings on the head and stern, since I took the time to draw them out earlier. They are going to be small, particularly on the stern, as seen by the mechanical pencil on the drawings: Will I be able to make them look anything like the original? Daunting! All for now, Mark

shipman, was that the large hall of models in the National Maritime Museum before the awful renovation? And was the Longridge model in that hall? That NMM hall was one the greatest places I ever remember experiencing; you needed days to look at it all. What a tragedy for all of us it is gone. Here is a photo of the first strake of the channel wale complete, on the port side. You can see how much the tumblehome straightens up towards the stern (compare the angle of the ports to the angle of the door to the quarter gallery) and the strake reverses its curve compared to the main wale below, causing the notable variation in plank widths. Mark

Wow, thanks, Mark. At least temporarily, my planking is staying in place better than that. Only time will tell, of course! Longridge was always my gold standard, sobering to see how time might treat our efforts. The surface also looks somewhat rough in the photo, and I recall him writing about polishing the finish. druxey, any idea what kind of glue Longridge had available to him at the time? Mark

Thanks, Gary, your Alfred project has always inspired me to keep going and do it well; I will work on regaining my patience! Greg and druxey, very interesting observation on Longridge's plank separation. If he really did use constant width blanks, he must have really cranked some of those into place. And even then, I would assume that he would have faired the upper edge after installation of each strake, just to get them down to the right width at various places on the hull. druxey, did Longridge's Victory move from place to place with lack of environmental control? I recall him writing about storing it in a seaside fortification during the war to avoid bombs, and finding a fine mould on the surface when he recovered it after the war. That could not have been good for it, to start! Mark

There was a time I thought I should have done a three decker, and now grateful I did not. I increasingly look wistfully at the frigates, sloops, etc. with one deck. I might have had a better chance of finishing one of those in my lifetime! I did not appreciate how dreary the planking becomes after a while. I recall reading Longridge's book on the Victory many years ago, which seemed to suggest that you just rip out planks of the correct thickness and width, and then bend them into place. I don't see how he did that. My hull requires spiling every single plank and custom fitting it. Because of the varying tumblehome, the planks vary in width along the total length of a strake; no way a single width blank could ever work. Oh, well, plug along--or maybe plank along.... Mark

Thanks, druxey and Gary. I was having so much fun planking without dealing with gunports, and now here they are back again!🙂 Mark

With the head drawing now behind me, I am carrying on with planking the channel wales. I just hit my first gunport for the upper deck, and realized I don't know if the stop or rebate for the upper gun ports are the same as for the gundeck ports--i.e., 3". Has anyone seen a specification for the rebates reducing in width as we progress up from the gundeck through the upper deck to the quarterdeck? Mark

Thanks, Marc, that is a delightful moulding detail. It is still amazing to me how almost every craftsma-before architectural Modernism took over after the Second World War--knew how to execute traditional Classical mouldings. Almost a lost art now. I needed to do a fair amount of refining on the head structure. The line and angle of the main rail is a given, as is the line and angle of the top of the upper cheek. The head timbers have to align with these top and bottom, but the curve in between is somewhat flexible. I discovered, once I projected up the locations of the middle and lower rail, that these curves had to move in an out a bit to align properly. I had to adjust the angle of the rails in plan a few times before everything line up in all three dimensions. I also learned from David Antscherl's Fully Framed Model book (vol. II, p, 227) that the slots cut into the head timbers are not parallel to the ground, even though the tops and bottoms of the rails are parallel to the ground. This is because the inner face is rising faster than the outer face when it cuts at an angle across the head timber. Very hard to visualize at first, but I confirmed this is indeed the case. Here are the three timber heads: And as you can see in the second one, the discharge tube does fall onto the lower rail. The only two sanitary ideas I can imagine, are Mark P.'s slanting tube, or here a sloping shelf. I will go for the sloping shelf for now... And here is a cross section just to the port of center, showing some of the construction. I think I will have to refine the upper edge of knee to align with the lower rail. Those two lines should be more fair to each other I am thinking. I think I am tired of working on the head drawings, back to planking! Mark

Hi druxey, Thanks for the idea, I was able to move the rails outboard by about 4 inches, by reducing the outboard curvature of the aft-most head timber. This helped with spacing looking more like the Bellona model in a number of areas. But there is a limit to how far this outboard curvature can be flattened out before it no longer looks like the Bellona model. And changing the curve moves the middle and lower rails in a set relationship to each other, since their outboard faces align with the outer curve of the head timber. So I can't get that much greater clearance between them. This results in the following rail locations. The location of the seats athwartship is based on my reading of Mark P.'s latest photo, which shows the fore-most outboard corner of each seat sitting on top of, but not projecting beyond, the outer face of the middle rail. And as I read the photo, the fore-most seat does indeed discharge onto the top of the lower rail, by about its thickness. I think through a great team effort here, I have located these as well as I can until I start building and get another perspective entirely! Mark

thanks, Mark, this are so useful! I was inspired to redraw the middle and lower rails, to find out if I had something wrong. I did indeed. I ended up drafting very accurately the first and third head timbers, and where the lower and middle rails would be cut into them in section: I then plotted the distance of these rails from the center line in the plan, and extended the lines aft to intersect the hull and forward to intersect the main rail as it sweeps up. I discovered that the aft ends moved more inboard than I had drawn before. So now, knowing these are in the correct location, how would the seats of ease fit? Looking at Mark's photos, the one thing that seems inarguable is that the foremost, outboard corner of each seat of ease sits on top of the middle rail, looking to me like it is just flush with the outboard face of the rail. This means it would have to be cut away for the thickness of the middle rail. It could maybe be a little more inboard, but looking at the foremost seat, it cannot move much more inboard without encroaching on the gammoning which is directly behind it. So I think these are the right location athwartships. There just does not seem to be any way that the fore seat avoids fouling the lower rail for the inboard half. Maybe there was a sloped bottom to the seat, directing things away from the rail? Mark

Thanks again, Mark P, these photos were invaluable. I saw a number of things I did not understand before. For example, the head timbers underneath the main rail are fore of the beams on the grated deck. I had assumed they were aligned. I could not make spacing work out until I realized this. I remember spending a long time many years ago at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich making notes on this model. I assume it is now put in storage, or is it on display at Chatham now? It is now painfully clear that the foremost seats of ease discharge directly onto the lower rail, as we can see in the lower half of the plan (light blue is the lower rail). There simply is no way around this, because the discharge tube could not cut in the inward face of the middle rail (darker blue). And it could not move inboard at all, because it would get in the way of the gammoning for the bowsprit. As druxey points out, this is probably washed well while at sea, but in port it would be messy indeed. I imagine some poor shlub was assigned latrine duty to clean off the lower rail every few hours... And here is a drawing working out the shape of the aft most head timber, in order to locate the middle and lower rails. Fascinating, complex geometry! Best wishes, Mark

Mark, Thank you, thank you! This is invaluable. So much guesswork without this. I see there are a few places to fall through on a dark night... Best, Mark

Hi druxey, I thought for a long time that these two seats of ease were on opposite sides of the center line, therefore just two forward of the knight heads. But after boosting the exposure in this photo and looking more carefully at the chutes below, they seem to be both on the starboard side, hard up against the second and third head timber respectively, and discharging between the middle and lower rail. The foremost one is definitely on a steep incline, and really exposed; it could not be the first choice if others were free! There is also very little clearance between the two rails in plan for the chute of the foremost seat, making this a messy detail if I read it right. My plan as currently drawn does not seem to align the sides of the chute as nicely with the lower rail as we see in this picture; maybe my parallelograms need to get a little more acute for this to work right. If they do indeed lie flat both on the head timber and the rail, then that is a sturdy means of fastening these in place, rather than just hanging free below the grating. I also notice a large disparity in the size of the hole for the warrant officers in the roundhouses, and the size of the hole in the seats of ease for the less fortunate sailors. I don't know what conclusion to draw about this... I welcome further thoughts on how this is all fitting together! Mark

Thanks, druxey, Steven, and Gary for your kind comments. And Gaetan, that is fascinating to see the two ships overlaid to see the differences. I had understood that the Bellona was largely copied from a captured French ship, but it must have been the hull lines and not the details. The French ship does look more elongated, whereas the Bellona like many English ships has an abrupt sweep up, even back, just behind the figurehead. This is a good example of elegant French taste! I have spent the day figuring out more of the head, now looking at the plan. I had no idea how little I had worked things out until I drew this. Keeping the gammoning between two head rails, making sure the seats of ease did not discharge onto the middle and lower rails, keeping the seats of ease away from the bumpkin, on and on it goes. There sure are a lot of things to figure out, and good to draw it before making mistakes in wood. I discovered today that 15 years ago when I cut a slot in the gammoning piece when making the keel and stem assembly, I put it in the wrong place. One of the head timbers is right in the way, so the bowsprit gammoning could not be installed as I have built it so far. Thankfully, the trailboard will cover the mistake. Don't tell anyone! Mark Mark

Here is one more variation, with the shield to the left side. It will have to await the construction of a maquette to visualize exactly how this goes. For an image of Bellona and shield location in a 1906 sculpture by Bertram Mackennal, see: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mackennal_-_War.jpg I understand this is on the grounds of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Mark

Hi druxey and Mark, I like the idea of her holding the shield; one less hand to carve! Here is an updated version, minus the gorgon that I don't feel like drawing right now... I put the captain next to the figurehead just to see how big this really is. She is one big lady! I remember seeing original figureheads in various maritime museums over the years; now I fully appreciate why they were so big. Mark

Great photos, Siggi. And exceptionally nice figurehead! Mark

Hi Mark, Yes, it is confusing, the Roman spear/javelin. As I read more online, there appear to be one version, the pilum, which has a long metal shaft put into a shorter handle like what the second Bellona model seems to show. But there also appears to be another version of a javelin with a metal head only a foot long, connected to a 2 meter wooden shaft. That is what appears to be held by the Bellona sculpture in posting #721 above. Lacking any further evidence, I will go with the javelin like the sculpture, treating it as a wooden shaft with a one foot long metal head. So I will have to paint the metal shaft as wood in my model. While I was at it, I finally nailed down the size the hawse holes. Since I did not do my framing as actually constructed, I had no idea where the hawse pieces were located at the head, and therefore where the hawse holes were located (since they are drilled with half out of each adjacent hawse piece). So I constructed their locations here. And I did this while waiting for glue to dry in more planking. Mark