SJSoane

Hi everyone, I was taken away from the shop by work for a number of months, and I have slowly been starting up again. I'll post a few updates. I focused on the mainmast and its immediate area. Here I am showing the mainmast under development. The basic construction is taken from Antscherl's Fully Framed Model Vol. IV, which planes a blank to an octagon, and then is smoothed round with sandpaper. I developed a couple of jigs to help. First, I put some nylon screws in the bottom of the jig for planing 4 and then 8 sides. As the mast is tapered, it kept rocking in the jig. This way, I can raise a screw underneath the blank to keep it level as I plane. Really helped. I also am showing a jig for marking the 7-10-7 proportions on the side of the 4 square blank; planing to these lines creates a perfect octagon. And rather than draw the proportions on each side, this jig lets me scribe the same on all sides, very quickly. I just hold the two end pins firmly against the sides of the blank, and let the middle ones scribe a line. It can accommodate the tapers and still keep the lines in proportion. I drilled the holes for the jig in the mill, which allowed me to dial in exactly the right distances to drill. I am also showing the setup for drilling out the partners for the mast wedge. The partners and the mast are both at different angles, and so I set this up on the angle plate on the mill to get an accurate bore. I built the partners up from the various parts, including the 45 degree chocks. And then I aligned the mast with a ruler on an adjustable drafting triangle to get the right fore and aft rake; and a holding jig at the top of the hull timbers to keep the mast centered. Fortunately, everything lined up on center. Best wishes, Mark

Hi Ed, I have not been able to keep up with the website for a number of months, due to pressing obligations outside the workshop. But I did check into see if you had completed the Naiad, and see here the good news. A virtuoso performance. Congratulations! I look forward to reading it again in Volume II. Is there a publication date yet? Best wishes, Mark

Giorgio, Beautiful work. I especially like seeing your construction steps. I hope all is well with you. Mark

Alexandru, I have re-done a few things, and know how painful it is. But the new line for the wale looks much better! Mark

Hi Michael, I just got back after an absence and caught up on your build. Fantastic! I am ready to take a class from you on metal working. Best wishes, Mark

Hi everyone, Work has kept me from the shipyard; I wish it was the other way around... Here are the gratings and coamings completed. The Bellona has a very unusual serpentine curve to the upper side of the gratings and coamings. I made sanding blocks to accomplish this. The first photos show how I cut the template from thin plywood, then glued this to the end of a maple block. I then use a piloting bit on the router table to cut the profile all along the length of the block. I then rubber cemented sand paper to the surface, with some guide bars to keep the hatch/coaming in the center of the jig. I did the hatches and coaming separately, to get them down to size, and then I sanded them with the grating in the coaming frame so they would be exactly the same. The coaming ends are rounded, but only above the level of the deck planking. To arrange this, I used a blank of wood the thickness of the decking as a spacer to use my chisel to cut the coamings at the right height. A file rounded them off nicely. I used masking tape and scored lines to keep the black shoe polish off the square corners. When the decking comes in, it should be a very nice fit. I am showing a temporary jig for the main mast partners, to make sure everything fits and the mast rakes at the right angle, before constructing the partners. Best wishes, Mark

Hi, everyone, I finished making the gratings (sanding to profile yet to go...). The mill method worked fine, allowing me to make the gratings to exact size. Since the battens and ledges remain constant sizes in width, the only way to fit a specified opening exactly is to vary the spaces between in both directions. The mill allowed this kind of accuracy, and the gundeck drawing shows the new gratings fitting exactly. Sanding the bottom to reveal the spaces between ledges is fairly straightforward; I used sandpaper glued to plywood, to keep it all flat. The first photo shows what happens when the sanding gets close to finish--thin strips peel away. These are pretty accurately to size now, following Steel. My earlier ones were much out of scale; don't know how it happened, but ..... The last photo shows my new jig for repeatedly cutting thin strips (the battens, in this case) from the left side of the saw. Much safer and cleaner cuts. Many thanks to Michael Mott who helped me refine this idea. You can see the discussion in the Tools Forum, under micro jig. Best wishes, Mark

Danny, Fantastic work on the pumps. I had been wondering how to do the pump brakes, and you lay it all out in a very clear tutorial! Mark

Hi Michael, Here is Mk1 of the jig. I didn't get around to making the specialized clamp around the table yet, and used a regular clamp temporarily to see how it would work. It is great. The micro-adjuster allowed me to sneak up on a perfect measure, and it was very fast and efficient to cut, move the fence and wood, cut again. It is safer, and the saw cuts more cleanly, making those small cuts on the left side of the sawblade rather than tight up against the fence. The nylon screw is gentle on the edge of the wood, and acts as a featherboard of sorts for holding the wood against the fence. My original drawing shows the clamp a little out of proportion to the actual table top. There is actually less overhang, and so less area for the clamp to grip. I am not sure how sturdy this original idea will be. I'll work on it another time... Thanks again for the elegant idea of the rod rather than the sliding wood stop. Mark

Hi Michael There is nothing like a shop reorganization for bringing more order into the world! Mark

Thanks, Remco, amazing. Mark

I just came across your project. Beautiful work! I wonder if the individual parts could be sent to a three-D printer...! Mark

Hi Remco, Can you show us how you did that? A scraper could not get into that tight corner. Mark

Hi druxey, On reading Antscherl in more detail, I drafted up the pumps based on the scanty information in the original admiralty drawings deck plan, and reconciled it with Antscherl's detailed reconstruction. I now believe that the circles I see in the deck plan may well be the rounded tops of the pump tubes seen within the cistern, not at the top of the deck where they have turned into octagons. I am going with the Antscherl reconstruction. Interestingly, the dimensions of the tubes on the 74 gun ship seem to be only an inch larger in diameter than the ones for the sloops. Mark

Thanks, Michael, I left a note at the tools and equipment posting. Mark

Nice, Michael! Much simpler and more elegant than my original sketch. I worried at first that the micro adjusting screw needs to be accessible even when the fence might be too close for a screwdriver to fit, and then I remembered that the fence can simply be moved away. Problem solved. I'll try building this next weekend; it will really come in handy for repeatable strips. Mark

Hi Gary, This is a great way to go back and revisit details that were long covered up by later work. It is a great reminder of your excellent craftsmanship and attention to detail, including in the research! Mark

Karl, this is some of the best craftsmanship I have ever seen. Beautiful. Mark

Greg, that is very ingenious. If I can't make my self-jigging idea work, I am building this jig for sure. Mark

Greg, I assume 1/4" scale? Amazing. Mark

Remco, Wow. You are so good at this that you might consider the fine beading along the edges of the capstan whelps and chocks in Napier's Legacy of a Ship Model on page 76, when you get to it. I did not see that detail in the original Bellona model, and so I did not attempt it. I'm not sure I could have done it. But I'll bet you can! Mark

Thanks, Ed, that it explains it well. It is a treat to watch these again! Mark

Hi Michael, Here is the saw stop I was thinking about making, inspired by your inventions. It indexes cuts on the side opposite the fence, with a micro-adjuster. I'll bet there is a more elegant way of doing this. Any thoughts? Mark

Remco, Perfection! I have a question about your mast wedge and partners. Since the mainmast angles aft, and the deck slopes, did you bore your hole through the partners at an angle? Or does the wedge make up the difference? Mark

Hi druxey, The more I read about this, the more interesting it gets. Please correct me if I haven't got anything right in what I am about to say... Putting aside the mechanics inside, the first question for outward appearance is whether the tubes are square, octagonal or round. The pump with the most documentation that I can see is the Cole pump, which has square tubes. But this was first tested in 1768, almost a decade later than the Bellona of 1760, so my pump is earlier. Could my pump also have had square tubes, inherited later by the Cole pump? The deck plan of the Bellona suggests round. And Falconer in his 1769 Dictionary shows pumps in his deck plan with round tubes just like the Bellona. But Falconer's detailed drawing of the pumps in elevation is described by Dodds and Moore (Building the Wooden Fighting Ship, p. 100) as a Cole pump. The elevation drawing does not reveal the cross section of the tubes. If this were a Cole pump, and Falconer shows his deck with round tubes like the Bellona, perhaps the circles in the plan show an inner tube, not the outer casing? David Antscherl, vol. 1. and 2 gives great detail on the pump, and describes his reconstruction as predating the Cole. I am inclined to follow this. But he shows octagonal tubes, bored like the dale tubes. And he points out that dale tubes were earlier rounded after they left the cistern. Could the Bellona be showing rounded pump tubes, like the earlier dale tubes, as described by Antscherl? Mark