wefalck

What's a 'push broom'?

This attention to historic detail is just exemplary ... 👍🏻

May the idea of firing at an angle is a bit overrated. In order for the guns to be effective, the ships had to be so close together that it didn't really matter at what angle you fired, there would be something to hit in almost any direction. In addition, the movement of the ship made precise alignment of the gun quite futile in practice. For chasing guns the situation might be different. In any case, firing such guns under battle conditions was almost as dangerous for the gun-crews as for those that may have been on the other side of the gun. There wouldn't have been much space on a gun-deck to stay out of the way of a recoiling gun and any whiplashing tackle.

I gather it depends on the master and his safety consciousness ... there are/were well-kept boats and others ...

That's an interesting utilisation of secondary mineral resources this dredging in Susquehanna. However, their coal-washing upstream must have been pretty wasteful and I am not sure about the environmental impact of both, discharging of large amounts of suspended matter and the dredging of the river bed ... What always fascinates me are these makeshift and improvised vessels (and logging trains for that matter) in the USA. We don't seem to have seen such things to that extent in Europe judging by the pictorial records. As a modeller you can let your creativity run free.

"... and pile it as haphazardly as possible on the deck." ... well that would be a hazard and would not normally be done unless a ship is temporarily moored to a quay. Everything that can move needs to be tied down, otherwise it may be lost or become a threat to the crew when shifting around. The crew would do this in their own interest.

TT-scale model railway suppliers may have sets of domestic animals, including dogs and cats ...

You could add a dog - smallish dogs where often kept on board, as alarms against trespassers and to keep vermin at bay.

Crew companionway The deck of the Rahschlup was flush, no raised quarterdeck or any deckhouses as such. Only companionways gave access to the crew quarters and the after cabin respectively. All in all, a very spartanic arrangement. Companionway on the reconstruction project for the galeas FÖRLIG WIND, Skeppsholmen, Stockholm (https://www.arbeitskreis-historischer-schiffbau.de/mitglieder/ontour/bootsbauplatz-skeppsholmen/) The length of the companionways and of the hatches can be taken from the side elevation drawing, but their width has to be inferred from common practice of the time. Likewise, their construction had to be inspired by photographs of appropriate restoration projects. A typical construction method seems to have been panelled sides. Other examples include simple vertical or horizontal staves that fill the space between the corner posts. Two narrow doors give access, together with a sliding roof section. The rails on which this cover slides seems to have been of varying degrees of complexity. I usually built such companionways around a core in Plexiglas that has been milled to shape. For this project, however, I wanted to show them open with some interior details, so that a construction method somewhat closer to the prototype had to be chosen. The different parts were drawn and cut out with the laser-cutter from 0.1 thick Canson paper. Each side was laminated from three layers for the actual companionway and two more layers for the coamings using Zapon varnish. The roof and the sliding cover were built up from two layers. The sliding rails were constructed from narrow laser-cut strips. The doors are also built up from three layers. Unlike on the prototype, the companionways and ‘coamings’ reach down to a horizontal layer in the hull in order to provide a reference for their height above the deck, when installed. As with all such parts, they may look a bit rough in the close-up pictures, but once painted and from a normal viewing distance they look very good (hopefully …). To be continued …

I gather this is always the dilemma: in real life, things were not always as neat as one may wish, particularly in the merchant navy with few crew; then on the other hand, if one reproduces it on a model, it may look like shoddy workmanship ...

Well, our models usually look far too much 'ship-shape, Bristol-fashion'. If you look at photographs, there is usually a lot of clutter and equipment on deck. Alone well-kept navy ships may present themselves well-ordered with everything at its place. The 'clutter' just adds realism.

Good to see that both, the model and its maker coming along well !

Perhaps it is helpful to recall how the different types of cement and glue work. Contact cements work due to physico-chemical interactions with the materials and by replacing the air between two parts so that the ambient pressure presses the parts together. For this reason, contact cement is mainly used for cementing together two non-porous materials or a non-porous material to a porous one (think laminate to wood). Because of this, contact cement works best with large surfaces (think again of laminating or veneering). The functioning of the bonds depends thus on the cement remaining slightly 'rubbery' and once all the solvent has evaporated, the bond may fail. Also, contact cement bonds are not very resistant against 'peeling' action. Thinking about these mechanisms and properties, cementing narrow planks that may still be 'springy' may not be an ideal area of application for contact cement, apart from the technical difficulties of applying a uniform film and high pressure. PVA on the other hand works in a completely different way. It forms only weak physico-chemical interactions with non-porous surfaces and therefore is not really suited to bond such materials to each other or to wood. PVA essentially keys into the wood pores of the parts to be glued together and forms a mechanical link between them ones cured. Because of this mechanical link by the cured resin the bond is resistant against peeling and it is typically the wood that fails and not the bond per se. This makes it a good glue, when there is some strain on parts, such as from 'springy' planks - if the parts have been clamped together until the PVA has fully cured.

On most contact cements it is written that the amount pressure applied is important, not its duration. This is why cobblers hammer down soles etc. and C-clamps are used. Both are not so good propositions on a delicate model ship's hull ...

... and typically they used what was available. So, one would need to specify, where the ship in question was built. Say, in the Netherland, particularly the Zaanstrek, they had easy access to semi-industrial sawn planks due to the large number of wind-driven saw-mills. In other parts of Europe, there may have been planks sawn in water-driven saw-mills, while in many parts of Europe planks had to be sawn by hand, making them expensive. In general, planks could be rather wide, due to the still relative abundance of large trees, which rapidly declined in the following century.