flyer

Hi Tom Fix the finished yard horizontally, soak the footropes with diluted PVAC glue, hang clips in regular distances onto the footrope to create a natural hang and let dry. I could include a picture when building the next yard. Cheers Peter

32 foot barge Alternating between building one mast and one boat was a good idea. That way I generally look forward to building the next mast or boat and enjoy the change. And building that many boats actually is fun. It's fascinating how one can form all those different small hulls with relative simple means. One of the problems of those boats - the floor set too high - was overcome this time by reworking the bulkheads to set the floor lower and then thinning the floor itself. For floor planks I used again 0.5mm planks cut to a width of 2mm. On the third try the inner depth of the boat now looks acceptable. The barge was finished again with an additional rudder (placed inside) and its gudgeons. When placing the barge on the beams I found not enough room between the launch and the rail on the inner side of the gangway. It seems that the skipper ordered slightly too large boats. Leaving off some of the stanchions was a solution which could work on the prototype as well. barge with planked floor finished and equipped barge barge on the beams - the rail should be sufficient, despite the partly missing stanchions the coxswain is checking his work place

Hi Pete Welcome to MSW. Pickle is a wonderful subject. The prototype is not really well documented, so you have a certain liberty how to finish the model. Bruce's suggestion is a good one. Don't forget to start a build log. That way you will get a lot of help and motivation to carry you on. Have fun! Cheers Peter

Hi B.E. Two fantastic builds and a very well earned glass of wine. Cheers! Happy new Year and stay healthy. Peter

Hi Michael Thank you, but it's just the ingenuity of the kit. The yard end cap with its two arms is one etched part. You just bend the arms at 90°. The end ring (which should be broader, but is an usable approximation) is a second part together with its arm. There you bend the arm and stick its end into the hole in the middle of the end plate of the first part - after deepening that hole carefully into the Yard. The two iron bands are strips of cartridge paper glued on. Then paint all black and voilà. The inner ring is similarly constructed, also of two parts. I know a bit of soldering. That would be quite easy especially if you don't have to worry about cold junctions. However such brass parts should better be brazed for stability and that's a bit trickier. Anyhow I think you don't need to worry about stun sail boom irons for now. I believe they came into use in the middle of the 18th century. Cheers Peter

Making the three yards was time consuming. The main yard is huge - it's as long as the lower main mast. According to Lees, the prototype yards are made of one piece of wood, if possible. If no suitable wood was available, e.g. the yard was just too large, then it was made of two parts, joined in the middle. That joint was strengthened with battens. Obviously for the original ship it would have been difficult to find such a single piece of wood to make a main yard. So I simulated a yard made of two parts with battens strengthening the centre. But I put on eight battens contrary to the arrangement with only 4 according to the plans. As I understand Lees, only spars which were made of two parts did have battens, but then eight of them (or 16 in case of the crossjack). The topsail yard and the topgallant yard are supposed to be made from one piece of wood each, so no battens were added. Attaching all the blocks, footropes and stun sail booms was done according to the plans. yardarm of the main yard with stun sail boom irons main yard finished main yard compared to the mizzen mast center of the main yard main topsail yard main topgallant yard all three main mast yards

Hi Martin What trigonometry is for one, is a Language for another. Although I love the French, I never mastered their language. It consists only of irregularities! On the other hand trigonometry seems quite straightforward once you found somewhere a right angle. So whenever I have a problem, I start to look for right angles - but never found one in French. Good luck with your new shipyard! Cheers Peter

Forming the octagonal centre section of a yard Nearly all yards have an octagonal centre section. Especially where no battens are used to strengthen the center section (according to Lees' Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War all yards which were made of just one single piece of wood) I wanted to make the largest possible octagon out of the given round dowel. To find how, I used some half forgotten trigonometry: Starting with filing the first plane which would form the first face of the octagon I had to find out how much to reduce the dowels diameter and what width I could expect. (α is half the centre angle of one face of the octagon. That is 360° : 8 = 45°. Thus α = 22,5°.) On a 4mm dowel for the main topsail yard I had to reduce the dowel by 0,16mm. The face width is about 1,5mm. After filing that face I turned the dowel by 90°, filed a further face an so on, until I had a square with four very round corners. Then I turned it by 45° and repeated the process. Fortunately my vice has a convenient opening to hold a square with its edges upmost. After finishing the centre section I had of course to rework the ends to get the necessary tapering. A tapered octagon was filed and with the yard put into a simple drilling machine the outer parts were worked round with sanding paper. That way I got a topsail yard with a width of about 3,7 mm over two opposite octagon faces out of a 4mm dowel. It's not as complicated as it sounds and you could use the same principle to form the centre section with a milling machine (and the ends with a lathe).

Hi Michael Have just found your newest masterpiece being built. I love it. She's already looking great and definitely bearing your trademark. Those dummy carriages are again a tremendous improvement. Cheers Peter

Hi Bob Fantastic work and excellent looking rope work on your Granado! Checking on my Granado I think that most of the ropes belayed to the breast rail do need some extra length to be properly usable e.g. braces when yards are braced up. These ends I did somehow coil around the rope itself which may not be correct but was what I could think of at the time. the lower part of that picture shows the breast rail Cheers Peter

Hi NotsoObviousNewby You're doing really tremendous work on your build. Regarding your questions I would say: - Option B - The feature with a beam across the deck linking the catheads is something I find only on ships of the line where that beam also forms part of the forward bulwark of the fore deck. I'm not quite sure if its main use is strengthening the catheads or just stabilizing the forward end of the deck or both. That beam - painted red - is shown by the skipper on my Bellerophon. It is level with the catheads. However I didn't find such a construction on frigates and smaller vessels, where the catheads usually lay diagonally to the deck beams and lead trough the deck perhaps to be fixed below the deck beams. I'm not sure about the exact construction as all my clever books are somewhat vague about it. OCCRE perhaps isn't always true to the original and may have something mixed up here. - If you allow me to criticise something which irritates me quite strongly and will also irritate you as you improve your knowledge and skills fast and steadily: In my opinion there is a grave mistake in the lay of your second planking of the bow. You should never allow planks to terminate against the side of other planks - do not hesitate to taper your planks and to use stealers and drop planks. The planking tutorials here on MSW are clear about that. This rather ugly mistake is seen occasionally on these pages. Perhaps it seems easier and quicker to plank that way and perhaps some less scrupulous manufacturers even recommend it, but I find doing it the right way means hardly more work but is much more satisfying and pleasing to the eye. Please excuse me for that rather harsh criticism but perhaps you still could correct it and your very promising build would certainly deserve a correct planking. Regards from an SlightlyAdvancedNewby Peter

Main Mast It was built similar to the mizzen with the same small changes to topmast- and topgallant mast-feet. I've got the impression that the width of one mast top and the foot of the next upper mast should be the same, in order to fit both cleanly between the trestletrees. So again I had to double up the mast feet. The upper crosstrees are rather delicate parts and I successfully broke a couple of ends off before strengthening them with some epoxy glue. Perhaps it would be better to provide them as photo etched metal parts. Also installing the rack with the boarding pikes was some fiddling work. Finally I had to drill out the holes of the metal rings to fit the pikes properly. Details of the main top without platform yet. The topmast even has a correct octagonal (instead of round) lower end. Of course nobody will ever notice it on the finished model. the nearly finished main top... ...is quite impressively high above the deck. topmast top foot with boarding pikes the masts are only provisionally stepped

Great progress despite all that plagues. I like your supports for the foot ropes. Ehm.. I hate to be the bearer of unfortunate news but there should be at least one more after the locusts - depending on if you are looking for Armageddon(1) or just want to leave Egypt(4). Let's hope it's not a plague of woodworms. Take care Peter

Hi Martin Yes, I do hope to cover all sorts of mistakes with rigging and sails - and hope to make no new ones there... And you are of course right with the x. The c doesn't make any sense in any language including mathematics. Despite the boatyard being still under construction I hope you feel already a bit at home at your new location. It's probably easier to relocate far away but still in the US than moving the same distance over here - I would have to start living in Casablanca or Moscow to travel as many miles as you and this would be a completely different world. Cheers Peter

18 foot cutter One special feature - and probable inaccuracy - which was disturbing me with the launch made even more problems with this small cutter: The false floor is too high above the keel. With the 1mm thick floorboards the launch's floor is quite high up. With the cutter that problem is severely aggravated. To gain some space below the thwarts they were placed as high up as possible. I also used 0,5 mm thick deck planks, cut to a width of 2mm to plank the floor which gained me another half mm (I was really desperately looking for some space). Even so the cutter looks somehow flattened. By filling much of it with equipment I hope to mask the missing depth. For the wales and the cappings of the sides I took only 1x1mm strips instead of 2x1. That way the proportions seemed more harmonious for such a small boat. The cutter was placed in the launch and both boats equipped with the kit's oars, boathooks and grapnels. Additionally both got a rudder with a tiller and also the removed thwarts and a water barrel were placed within the launch. While working on the boat also finished the poop and quarterdeck barricades with hammock nettings and the sand buckets. the small cutter with its rudder the skipper checks the completeness of the equipment the launch with equipment poop deck barricade quarter deck barricade (I see that the top of the hammock nettings need some reworking.) the launch on the beams an overview of the work done in this chapter

Surprisingly (but I should've known by now) the making of the 3 yards, boom and gaff was more time demanding than the mast itself. I did deviate from the kit instructions a few times, mostly when making the crossjack. First of all making the crossjack with a 8mm dowel was grossly out of proportion. I tock a 6mm one. Making the centre part 16 squared turned out to be rather difficult. Finally I made 16 battens with a cross section of 0,5x1,1mm from leftover deck planks and glued them on. Battens were usually held with iron rings. Those were simulated with stripes of cartridge paper. After all that work the centre section looked more round than hexadecagonal. (I'm not sure if that word really exists in English - I'll have to ask Sheldon Cooper or another authority on complicated words.) The spritsail yard, which is even smaller and also should be 16 squared in the centre, will probably have to be content with a round centre. Another change I made, was to replace all stirrups for the footropes by 0,5mm black thread. A eye splice was simulated at the end by threading the rope back through itself twice and hardening that small sling with glue to keep it stable. The upper end was glued onto the yard with three round turns. This looks less orderly than the usual etched metal stirrups on models but I like it and think it's a bit closer to the prototype. The rest of the work was done according to plans and instructions except that I left off those strange 4 battens on the topsail yard. If ever it should have 8 and only when the yard is made from 2 pieces. Mine is one straight piece of wood with the usual octagonal centre part. the 3 yards boom and gaff crossjack centre part of crossjack- supposed to be 16-sided stirrup topsail yard topgallant yard boom gaff

Hi Martin When checking on CT, I noticed that you will not get completely rid of the cows but you will have some decent vineyards nearby. Being in a nice rural landscape but only 2 hours from NY and BOS looks just great. I wish you save travel and a very happy landing at your new home. Peter

I do agree with RussR. A sailing ship must have sails. My 3rd model was the first with (furled) sails. As I didn't know better I used pre-sawn sails and learned a lot. The main points are already mentioned in other posts here: Never use them and when sails are furled reduce the height by 1/3. The next try -Granado- was with furled sails made on order by a professional seamstress. I just sawed the boltropes on. As pointed out here the seams are much to coarse and also the boltropes still seemed too prominent. Then I made the sails myself, just pencilled the seams onto the fabric and glued the boltropes into the seams. Furled they looked good enough for me to try full sails on the next two models - both schooners. Now I'm coming to the point: There is a further possibility - you have partly set sails. For example leave the topgallant sails furled, set topsails as in medium wind and perhaps have the mainsail furled as well. Just choose a scenario, such as e.g. ready for battle in moderate wind, and set the sails accordingly. A benefit of full or partly set sails is the fact that you can brace the yards as sharp as you like and the rigging allows which gives a more dynamic look and reduces the space needed for the finished model (by about 15% for yards braced 30°). I'm building a 74 now and will add sails, do however not know yet how exactly. They will most probably be partly set because I want to brace the yards.

Mizzen mast In order to make the following work more varied I decided to alternate between building a boat and a mast. As the mizzen mast is the smallest I started with that. Still having no lathe I had to file the dowels first square, then octagonal. Then they were put in a drilling machine and worked round with increasingly fine sanding paper. So far I made all my lasts and yards that way and it seems to work. The mizzen presented some minor difficulties. The lower mast was quite straightforward to build, only a saddle for the boom was added. Several books, e.g. 'Victory' in the AOTS series show such a device but not my main reference of the Bellona. But she still shows the lateen mizzen yard. The foots of the topmast and topgallant mast were doubled up to a rectangular form, not square. This was necessary to fit them in the right distance to the lower mast heads into the tops. The topmast cap was also too small to fit and had to be doubled up by 1mm in length and width and the holes were slightly adjusted to get the right distance. I don't quite understand why the caps are presented lengthwise cut in two and quite imprecisely so. A cap in the right size in one piece as in other kits would be easier to work with and more precise. The fact that the head of each mast and its hole in the cap should be square and not round was not corrected - black paint will hide that flaw. The mizzen top got also some vertical battens glued on, on top of the iron rings which strengthen the mast head. A rather minor but important change was made to the top of the topgallant mast. The plan shows a 1mm hole front to aft just below the top for the tie of the topgallant yard. It is rather unwise to weaken the mast in its thinnest position that way. I remember at least one model where I broke a topgallant mast in exactly this position twice when I got caught during rigging work. According to Lees the tie was led anyhow through sheaves in the masthead so I drilled that hole about 1 third from the top through the head. As always I finished the mast off the ship and glued all parts together. That way I have a mast with all parts truly in line. The shrouds may be attached without problems to the finished mast. lower mast, topmast, topgallant mast and top - fids already inserted saddle on lower mast and reworked topmast cap topmast cap being reworked - the left hole and the head of the lower mast should actually be square mizzen top. iron rings, bolsters and battens added topgallant top with hole for the tie finished mast top with blocks attached the first mast stands provisionally - this model really takes up a lot of space

Hi Martin A search in the web revealed that that belt was a gift and it was dyed purple. I guess that was an expensive colour then. However nothing about its construction - some fabric perhaps. Anyhow, I'll think about adding a purple belt to my Bellerophon. So, you are close to moving. Might I ask where to? Someplace which is cooler, with more wine and less tornadoes and cows perhaps? Cheers Peter

Hi Bob It definitely looks much better. Don't worry, be happy. Perhaps even when building - or repairing - the prototype they didn't always have the right strength of rope available either. And of course they would take the next stronger one. Anyway, I keep telling myself, that all the snags and imperfections on my models make them to look more realistic, because working conditions back in the 18th and 19th century weren't perfect either. Cheers Peter

Hi Snowy Yes, the same stripes for 1st and 2nd planking and yes again I tried to stagger it by starting the 2nd planking a bit too high and then sanding off the top 1mm of the 2nd planking. (With some foresight I would however have done this to the 1st planking because it would be less obvious.) Anyhow I still had a few areas where the seams of both layers met - and split during sanding. Reinforcement with liquid CA glue helped. Btw I used CA glue for the whole 2nd planking and epoxy glue to fix the rails. Hi Sailor1234567890 Well I think you could start with the boats. Me, I was impatient to see the real dimensions of the ship and started with the big one. I don't know if you could use the boats as training pieces, if that is on your mind, because they are fiddly work and you have less room for corrections with those thin planks. I had to check where that place Shubenacadie is. I hope you forgive me that I had never heard of it. Well, that looks like a nice location, quite close to Halifax and therefore much closer to the sea and the navy than my place. Cheers all Peter

Hi Martin A bit belated I rise an answering glass towards the west - one of my last Corona beers. It's too hot for red wine. About Bellerophon's belt: Was it perhaps mentioned in some writing or seen on a statue? I only remember Orion's belt and would know how this one looks... Take care Peter

34 foot launch Next I wanted to try the first boat. According to the manual I started with the big launch. Up to now I used resin shells with additional built in details to make boats. This was the first plank on frame built. It went quite well albeit much slower than the 3 weeks the manual mentions for all 4 boats. Also not everything went as intended. When putting in the ribs, the base of the floor boards in the aft part proved to be mounted askew. I hope to disguise this mistake with the benches and perhaps some of the boats equipment stowed inside. The inside was painted yellow with floorboards and benches only varnished. Most of the outside is painted white with black wales and a yellow rail. After about two weeks of occasional work the launch is finished. No thwarts are put into the launch because the 18 foot cutter will later be placed inside. She is quite large compared to other boats I made so far. But I can see the usefulness of such a craft for a variety of tasks. I don't remember seeing much about building these boats in other logs. Therefore I put some additional pictures into this one. Skeleton with first plank. First planking in progress... ...and finished. Some filler was necessary to get smooth lines. The transom was planked horizontally - contrary to the manuals vertical planks. 2nd planking under way ... and finished. Now the bulkheads were removed. floor boards in place The rail was preformed and added in one piece and then the rowlocks filed into it. 2 stripes of cartridge paper serve as gudgeons for the rudder. The finished and painted launch is checked by the crew. Provisionally put in place on the beams of a 74 the launch looks huge.

Hi Bob Now I see that the 3mm blocks in fact also look a bit thin - especially compared to your wonderfully detailed bowsprit shrouds. I'm afraid that from now on you will always look at that tackle in a sceptical light and if you ever want to be happy again you'll have to install something like a tackle with 5mm blocks and 0.25mm thread. Sorry for that trouble. Cheers Peter