SJSoane

I just saw druxey's earlier note, wondering if a lodging knee does anything in this short space between 15 and 14A. It has virtually no longitudinal arm, so really isn't doing much in the way of lateral support. Maybe 14A is acting as a massive knee for 15. Food for thought.... I'll bet when the master shipwright was done laying out ports, beams, etc., he left it to the poor assistant shipwrights to figure out these little details, and to swear a little at the master shipwright not thinking this through more fully! Mark

I am gluing in the quickwork, now stained red, but I have only 4 clamps that will work through the gunports, so this is a day of glue, wait, glue, wait... It gives me time between gluing to think more about the knee issue here. With Siggi's help, I moved standard #6 forward one beam, which cleaned up room for resolving the hanging knee on beam 15. It could: 1) run aft, as shown dotted; 2) or starting aft of the beam but running forward, as in the purple; 3) from forward of the beam as shown in orange. The orange option is the cleanest in section, but in plan it puts two hanging knees in the same space, leaving no room for a lodging knee. And beam 15 is especially important, anchoring the main mast partners and the bitts at the center. I would think it would want all possible lateral support in the way of a lodging knee. The purple and dotted option leave a lodging knee forward of beam 15, but would be some of the weirdest compass timbers ever grown. I think I will have to sleep on this choice.... Mark

Siggi, Ah, you are absolutely right! I did not draw the small curved beams in the gundeck on the section drawing. That changes my options a great deal, giving two more locations for standards. Maybe I can get the #6 standard away from the troublesome area. Thank you so much! I'll spend a little time rethinking what is going on in this area. It sure does help to have many people looking at these details, since I seem very able to miss things by mistake. Mark

beautiful craftsmanship! Mark

HI Gary, I just wrote some more thoughts about this over at my posting on the Bellona. I didn't want to mess up your site with a bunch of Bellona drawings. I discovered that there is a good reason for keeping the pattern consistent for the location of the hanging knees. That is because if you change back and forth at different points in the hull, you end up with a number of spaces between beams that have two hanging knees with no space for a lodging knee. I have seen only one example of this, in the drawing of the Arrogant of 1761, in Brian Lavery's book on the Bellona, page 46. But in this example, the spaces with two hanging knees are in places with little room for a lodging knee anyway. Mark

Thanks, Gary, your historical look does suggest this was an evolving idea in the shipwrights' world. the internal planking diagram of the Arrogant of 1761 (in the Lavery Bellona book, page 46) does show hanging knees on the upper deck bouncing back and forth between fore or aft of the beam, not necessarily related to the midships line of the hull. So your date of about 1760 seems right, as a time when things started to change. The difference in dates between your ship and mine may make a difference in how we handle this. Thanks, Siggi. My short curved beams are 14A and 13A in the section, which don't line up with a beam in the gundeck below, so I didn't see how there could be standards at those locations. I assumed that standards would always line up with a beam below, otherwise they would be pressing down on thin planking, not structure. But the contracts of the time call for 11 standards on the gundeck, which is fewer than the number of beams. So maybe I have the standards in the wrong places. I will have to look at that. In the cold light of morning, I see the knock-on effect of moving these knees around. My purple proposal below puts two hanging knees in the space between 14 and 14A, which leaves no room for a lodging knee. And a lodging knee seems particularly important here, taking some of the load of the short curved beam to the side of the hull. I can't find any examples of two HANGING knees in the same space in an important location like this. I have seen, and drew, two LODGING knees in a same space, which is how the pattern changes from fore to aft of center. See the locking lodging knees between 12 and 13 below. The only example I have seen of a space with two hanging knees and no lodging knee is in the internal planking diagram from the Arrogant of 1761, referenced above. But the several instances are in places with another beam very close by, with little room for a lodging knee. A lodging knee in these spots would not be nearly as important as the one between 14 and 14A above. So I think the quest continues on how to manage this particular intersection of knees and standards.... I sure am glad I am retired and can spend lots of time on fun problems like this!🙂 Mark

druxey, good suggestions. I drew the location of the gun carriage at the port to study this, and realized that the standard has to shift forward of the gundeck beam below it, to give enough clearance for the gun when it is run out. That then leaves room for the port tackle eyebolt to remain in its correct position, and the breeching ringbolt can move onto the face of the standard. And this only works if I shift the hanging knees at 14A and 15 to the fore sides of their respective beams. The dotted lines are my original idea, the purple lines are the proposed solution. Who says there are a lot of inter-relationships among the parts!☺️ Mark

Thanks, druxey, I I must have been posting my comments when your's came through. Yes, the only way the dotted line position makes sense if if there is a hull frame in that location. I will have to look at that more closely. Mark

A little more drawing this morning, and I was able to clear the eyebolts and rings in all places but one, by casting the hanging knee a little further fore or aft of the port. The one remaining question is where standard #6 cannot move because it is related to the beam below. The ironwork either has to go on top of the standard, or moved fore of the standard as shown in the dotted line. Maybe the latter position is more consistent with everything else? Mark

Thanks, Greg and Marc. Once I discovered the 18th century model builders did SWOPEM, it was an open door for me! But as you point out Greg, sometimes it was harder to do it in one piece than in many. The paradoxes of the world. I have finished cutting all of the quickwork, and realized that now I have each piece off the hull for staining, I could drill for the hardware for the gun tackles and breaching ropes. So I started laying out the locations for the eyebolts and rings, and discovered interference with the knees and sometimes the standards. Here is a sample. The rules for location I found in Allan Yedlinsky's great book, Scantlings of Royal Navy Ships; a note on page 151 locates the ironwork relative to the timber frame member adjacent to the port opening. The eyebolt for the port tackle is centered up and down on the port, 1/3 of the siding of the hull frame away from the port; and the eyebolt and ring for the breeching rope is a quarter of the height of the port above the sill, and 2/3 of the siding away from the port. This would ensure that the bolts run through a solid frame, and are offset in the same piece of wood to avoid splitting. But following this rule puts the ironwork sometimes right on top of knees or standards. I can see putting in compass timber knees where necessary to avoid the conflict, as I have done in a number of places below, but on the standard #6 in the second image, the conflict is not fixable. The standard is located by the beam below. So, would the eyebolts in this case have been shifted to the other side of the standard, or bolted through the face of the standard itself? Just when you think you have everything figured out....... Mark

Thanks so much, druxey and Gary. You keep me going through some tedious steps. I am working on quickwork now, which was not so quick when I started; but it gets faster with repetition until my brain wanders and I cut too short... Thanks also, Giampieroricci. The wood is all South American boxwood, and the red is a stain mixed in with the polyurethane finish. I can't stain up to a line because the stain travels through cells in the grain past the edge of the stain. That is why I have to stain first and install later. Mark

Hi Marc, I somehow lost the notifications to your build. I am just catching up. Looks spectacular! there needs to be a shanty song, "file, fit, file, fit, file, fit...."🙃 Mark

Gary, I just remembered I was also looking at the inboard works drawing for the Arrogant, published in Lavery's Bellona AOS book, page 46. Have you seen the original? The way this is redrawn in the Lavery book leaves a lot of details unanswered. But it does show a few hanging knees aft of center on the forward side of the beam, for example, on the gundeck two ports forward of the stern, and another six ports forward of the stern. Mark

thanks so much, Gaetan, for the information about the camera and particularly the lights. Mark

Hi Gary, I just saw this string of posts on a very interesting question! I struggled to understand the conflicts between the drawings that you, Siggi, Mark and druxey refer to, and also the directions I saw in the 1763 Marlborough contract, which say, "Every Beam of the Quarterdeck before the Mizen Mast & Every other Beam abaft, to be kneed with 1 Hanging & 1 Lodging Knee at Each End." And for the Roundhouse, "Every other Beam..." Here is my best guess at how it works on the Bellona, whose ports do not align in the same way as the Dorsetshire, so I had to make "shipwright" best guesses at how to handle each location. I had to propose some pretty severely curved knees to make the rule work; I wonder if such trees exist! It also puts some knees in the captain's quarters, which are not compatible with panelling.... Mark

It has been a long time since my last posting. I started work on the gundeck spirketting and quickwork. Here are a few images in progress. Apologies for the dust I see in the photos; time for a little housecleaning! I said earlier that in order to keep a clean line between the stained spirketting and the natural wood waterway, I would not be able to make individual strakes of this inner planking, level them down, and then stain in place. I did what Rob Napier discovered in his refurbishment of the 18th century model of the Princess Royal; he named this typical 18th century model builder technique SWOPEM- "Situation Where One Piece Equals many". I scored the hooked scarp joints onto a single strake for the spirketting. The butt joints between the pieces will be covered by the standards. Laying out the sprirketting and joints: The SWOPEM scored joints in the spirketting and quickwork: The aft most piece of spirketting took such a severe twist and bend that I decided to carve it rather than steam it. My steaming always required clamping into final position, and there was no good way to clamp this: and now to see the guns against the red:

Gaetan, what camera and lens are you using for the interior shots? They are spectacular! Mark

Fantastic, Gaetan! It really is like being in the actual ship. Mark

Gary, beautiful work on the lodging and hanging knees. I was dreading starting that, but you make it look manageable! Mark

I once accidentally mirrored something on a line of axis that was just slightly not straight. Took me forever to figure out what went wrong. Does the PDF measure exactly symmetrical? Mark

just like being in the actual ship, except for the giant clamps taller than a man!🙂 Beautiful work and photos, Gaetan. Mark

Hi Greg, when I started looking at the finish joinery and bulkheads, it began looking like more familiar territory for me. Besides the human factor, I realized that much of the detail was inspired by Classical architectural design, in the columns and pilasters on the bulkheads particularly. Some contemporary models and drawings I looked at were pretty fanciful in their interpretations of the traditional Classical orders (like Tuscan, Corinthian, Doric, Ionic), while others were pretty accurate. The rules in architecture are very precise in proportions and shapes of mouldings. I suppose the officers came from an upper class used to living in Classical houses, and wanted something like that in their own quarters. So finally moving on from drawing, I fabricated more beams while the garage is not too cold to work on the router table. I refined my jig, and it worked like a charm to crank out all of the upper deck, forecastle and quarterdeck beams. The jig has to do several things: 1) cut a smooth arc on the upper surface; 2) cut a smooth arc on the lower surface concentric to the upper surface; and 3) cut these surfaces with the correct angle at every beam location, which gets increasingly steeper towards the bow and stern due to the sheer. Getting the right curvature for the beams on each deck level starts with finding the rise at the center of the beams at their widest point on the given deck. This comes from the drawings or specifications. I then drew this curve on blocks of wood. I was fortunate to obtain an old set of drafting curves, which makes this simple; but arcs can also be constructed by traditional means. I then cut the curves on the bandsaw, and rubber cemented sandpaper to one side. I used this to smooth the opposite side, then put sandpaper on the smooth block to clean up the first block. When this is complete, you have a set of convex and concave blocks at the correct radius, which are very accurate and smooth arcs because rubbing one lengthwise against the other cleans up any irregularities and forms a perfect arc of a circle. I use these all the time for sanding edges of planking, leveling decks, etc. For the deck beam jig, I used these to form a convex and concave edge on a piece of plywood, I did this by attaching them to the plywood with double sided tape, and then running them against a piloted router bit on a router table. I then installed spacers, first one with a straight edge for cutting the initial convex edge, and then a curved one for cutting the concave edge (because the beam now has a convex edge after the first cut, which is placed against the concave stop for the second cut). You see below that I also rubber cemented sandpaper onto the jig, to provide more holding power so the blanks don't slide around when they are being cut. I then hinged this template to another piece of plywood, also cut with the concave and convex edges, but recessed well enough away from the template above so it would not run into the nut on the router. Its job is primarily to provide a smooth and stable surface for sliding on the router table. Two nylon screws allow me to adjust the angle of the template relative to the router table, thereby creating the angle needed for each beam due to the sheer. I used to use an angle gauge held against the drawings and then against the jig, but now I can get the angle off the CAD drawings, and use a digital angle gauge to measure as I turn the nylon screws. And then finally, a third piece of plywood is screwed down with the black plastic knobs, to provide a clamp to the workpiece (a scrap strip of wood the same thickness as the beams is put in the clamp at the opposite side to keep the upper plywood piece parallel to the template). We see it set up here with the first cut ready to go. And then the template is run against a piloted router bit in the router table. It took a bit of work to get all of the jig parts to work, but once set up, it allows a very rapid and precise cutting of beams, each one tailored to its unique location in the sheer, and with parallel surfaces of the correct radius. Here are (from top to bottom) the beams for the forecastle, the quarterdeck, and the upper deck, including the half beams at the aft end of the upper deck. I took extra care in marking out on each beam which edge should be convex, and also the direction of the angle on the end. The danger of a jig is that you automatically cut, remove, add next, cut, remove, etc. and it is so easy to get things turned around if you are not scrupulous about keeping everything in the same order. Having a visual clue to the correct orientation when putting in a blank helps keep things straight. Once each set of beams for a given deck was complete, I took the jig apart, recut the concave and convex edges with the radiuses required for the next deck, and then put it all back together again. Those with a mathematical outlook will realize that my upper and lower surfaces are not exactly concentric, since they are the same radius but the moulded distance of the beam apart. I decided at this scale that it would not be significant. So my only remaining challenge is how to store all of these beams so they don't warp. How does one sticker so many small pieces?🙂 Mark

druxey, I was hoping for a 1:64 electric soldering iron...🙃 Continuing to draw more details, now the stern balcony and screen bulkhead. I learned a lot about some very refined design characteristics. Because the roundhouse beams round up higher than the quarterdeck beams, the transoms below the windows take a sweet curve split between the two. All of the intermediate window bars are equally spaced between the two. The doors in the last bays at the outboard ends of the screen are disguised to look like the rest of the windows, with very thin rails framing the door window hiding behind the columns on the fore side of the bulkhead. And best of all, pocket doors to the quarter galleries from the balcony itself, which slide aft into just enough room in the panelling at the side of the balcony. You can see in the upper left sketch below how the door just fits between the hull frame and the finish panelling. this has to keep very thin so it does not intrude on inboard side of the fair damsel in the stern carving, sketch to the upper right. And the bottom sketch shows just how close the sliding door (slid aft position in dotted lines) comes to the end of the panelling. Oh, and the sash window to the wardroom one deck below has a little pocket between the transom and the aft most mouldings, so it can slide up 8" for some fresh air. There was some very sophisticated design work going into this finish joinery at the stern. There is something kind of thrilling about this detective work, reconstructing the design of someone working 270 years ago. It is almost like sitting there with him at the drawing board, as he thinks through how to make all of these parts interact nicely with each other. Mark

druxey, I just need to figure out how to hold the miniature red hot iron...😉

Hi Gaetan, thanks so much for the photos. That really brings a drawing to life, showing how common this device must have been in a lot of different locations and for different tasks. I just keep drawing away, deciding to get more things worked out on paper before cutting more wood. The cross sections are exceedingly helpful for refining a lot of the details. I should have done this years ago.... Now I have a clear record, in one place, of the sizes of things as I work my way upwards. By the way, in the specifications for the Marlborough, dated 1763, there is an interesting description of the beams and clamps that I remember Gary (garyshipwright) pointing out several years ago--I just didn't understand it at the time, but now I think I do. Gary, you so far ahead of me in so many ways! Taking the gun deck, for example, the lodging knees are set 1 1/2" below the top surface of the beams, to ensure more air circulation between the knee and the deck above, to avoid rot. The upper surface of the clamps touch the lower surface of the knees, and are themselves 1' 5" deep. But this means that the beams, moulded 1'-4", would cut excessively into the clamp, causing a structural weakness. So the beams are bearded up at the extreme ends (12" from the end), to cut into the top of the clamp by only 1". I did not understand the logic of this years ago, but now I do. The clamp is providing great longitudinal structure, and cutting large notches into its top surface would reduce the effective structure down to whatever was left below the notches. This needs to be minimized. At the same time, the structural capacity of the beams is mostly determined at the center of its span. Notches at the extreme ends do little to compromise the structure; although, it does provide a place for splits to start. The pillars at the centers would provide a lot of additional support at the center, reducing the load that has to be carried at the end over the clamp. An interesting balance of avoiding rot, while maximizing structure. They were clever guys, those shipwrights! I already installed my clamps several years ago, and placed them without this refined detail, so they are lower by a few inches. I am not inclined to move them at this point. So my drawings will reflect the true detail, but the actual model will be simplified. Don't tell anyone! Mark