wefalck

I have three of them in different sizes, but mainly use them on my milling machines. Fixing them to the base of the PROXXON-drill could be somewhat inconvenient, but the original vice could not be screwed down either. Not sure about the current arrangements. The 1" vices have four holes on the sides tapped M4 and two at the bottom. I cut two pieces of small angle iron or aluminium the length of the vice and drilled holes to match the four tapped holes. The angles were screwed to the sides and had a number of holes in the horizontal part with which it can be screwed to machine tables. The larger vice have horizontol through holes (I think 6 mm) for a round rod that goes through the lug with which the moveable jaw is screwed down. I made a 6 mm rod and cross-drilled it with 3 mm to take some long M3 screws with which to tie down the vice onto machine tables. The vices also have to round notches at the end for simple hold-down clamps. If you think of getting one of the 1" vices, make sure you get one with the shallow recess on top of the jaw - this comes very handy for small pieces. The others don't seem to come with this feature. BTW the vices may also run under the name of EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining) vices, where they are used to hold the electrodes. I didn't check, whether RDG Tools do have these vices, but thought that I bought one of mine from them. But I may be wrong, as this must have been some 15 years ago.

I bought my vice in the early 1980s and from the beginning was never really happy with it, because of the rather poor guide for the moving jaw. At that time I didn't know of better alternatives. However, I don't know, whether the vice has been improved since. Personally, I now would get myself a (or several of different size) so-called toolmaker insert vice. These close very precisely and are ground on all faces, so can be mounted horizontally, vertically and sideways, which offers multiple ways of work-holding. The 1-inch size costs around 40€ on the Continent. They are typically made in India or China and most tool suppliers have them, e.g. https://www.rdgtools.co.uk/ (I hasten to add that I have no other connection to this company than as satisfied customer - in those old pre-Brexit days). Below an example picture randomly picked from the Internet:

David, why do you think, a two piece-strake will be easier ? I would have thought that fitting a continuous piece would be simpler in the sense, that one does not need to deal with lifting up or off-set butts.

Have you tried rivetting ? Jewellers have so-called rivetting wheels, this are kind of hardened steel wheels with a wavy rim that fit into your hand-held drill. You make the hole slightly conical from the outside with a conical reamer and let the stanchion protrude a bit. With the wheel you hammer flat the protrusion without stressing too much the rail. You would probably need a sort of jig to hold the rail in.

Looking excellent - as expected ! Did you make some sort of jig for soldering the rails on the staircase ?

I didn't check against my photographs, but were the planks really butted ? I would have throught that in the USA at that time it would have been easy to obtain full-length planks.

In about 1977 I bought what by modern standards would be a primitve hand-held drill. At that time I hadn't heard of Dremel and, I think, PROXXON was not on the market yet. This drill consist of a motor in an aluminium tube, brass tube screwed to the motor shaft with a set-screw that acts as a seat for the collets. A set of good steel collets for bit up to 1/8" (or 3.2 mm) belongs to it. I am still using it almost daily. In around 1983 I bought the PROXXON bench drill, when it first came onto the market and with it all the extras then available, namely a kit to convert it into a light wood-lathe or disk-sander. I have abused it for all these purposes and light routing too. It was worth every 'Pfenning' I spent on it. I gather the ball-bearings could do with replacing by now, but originally, it was capable to do more than what was advertised, namely drilling 0.5 mm holes, I frequently drilled holes down to 0.3 mm diameter with it. Or course, it could not compete with the small Swiss precision benchdrills I knew from my university's workshops. I added to the abuse by buying a larger 3/8" drill-chuck for non-modelling work, but otherwise preferred the collets, which would take up to 1/8" shafts. The PROXXON drill is belt driven (I still use the first belt), but I rarely used anything else but the highest reduction (the motor is a standard 90 W sewing machine-type motor with presumably 3500 rpm. In order to reduce speed further, I am using a plug-dimmer. This in turn is plugged into a socket that is wire to a foot switch, allowing hands-free operation.

I have done it the same way as Roger, gravity keeps everything together. In fact the four stiles are somewhat shorter than the glass panes so that the glass fits into notches in the lid. The lid can be either solid (makes the glass case dark) or a frame with glass in it. This frame can be constructed in (at least) two ways: - the window-carpenter's way, that is like a picture frame into which you drop the glass and then secure with four narrow battens nailed to the inside of the frame - I used metal corner pieces to keep the frame together and I cut a groove into the four parts of the frame. The fairly big (80 cm long, 60 cm high, 20 cm deep) glass case has survived several house moves, I just taped down the lid for extra security.

The rabbet is there to keep the garboard plank close to the keel, even if the ship is flexing and twisting in a sea. So most larger seagoing vessels are constructed with rabbets in the keel and the stem. When the garboard sits more less vertical on the keel, theoretically, you have two options for the rabbet, you can cut a square groove (or square notch, if there is a keelson sitting directly on the keel) or you can cut a triangular groove, as usual, but then have to sharpen the edge of the plank to fit. The square groove/notch arrangement would be difficult to get water-tight, as the slightest variation of thickness of the plank in the groove can cause it work loose and the caulking to fall out. If you have a triangular groove, you will be wedging the garboard plank into that groove and it cannot move in any direction. However, whether it is worth to replicate this on a model is another question. One cannot see this, once the planking is finished and you can arrange the rabbet in the way that is easiest to make - that is when you only care about appearance and don't want to reproduce actual building techniques.

Depends on the Gütermann thread you ordered. Synthetics mostly cannot be dyed.

I don't want to be a heretic and it may not be the right place to discuss this, but why are people so crazy about tung-oil ? I can understand that it is used for say furniture or certain musical instruments, where apparently it is mixed with line-seed oil to reduce its brittleness. Somehow, applying an oily substance to a delicate item, such as a model, even an oxidating, i.e. drying, oil, does make me somewhat uncomfortable. Shellac or nitrocellulose-based varnishes seem to be 'cleaner' options. There are no many light-fast dyes around, so dying wood should not be such a problem. In think in many cases dyes can be mixed to change the hue and diluted, if needed. This seems to be give more reproducible results.

I didn't do many of such builds, but the frames getting stuck in the grooves was one of my worries. I indeed edited the lines so that I only had grooves in the garbord area, which fixes the frames at three points, namely in these grooves and locating holes as per Allen's example. If the prototype construction allows it, one could also have grooved keelson. Or, again prototype construction permitting, one could have the grooves in the keel-piece.

Let's see what he responds, but if there was a tumble-home (which makes it actually rather elegant), then one could not remove the boat-shell from the plug - unless the last plank is fitted without the plug. Edit: oops wrote the above, while he was responding ...

The people of the time definitely were much less dogmatic, which today in historic research can cause a lot of confusion, as one and the same ship may be listed under different categories in different ships lists for instance (another reason, of course, is that it may have been re-rigged). I have he feeling that this dogmatism comes from yacht-clubs that in turn were often influenced by navy traditions. A dogmatism that persists in yachtsmen until today. The professionals in the merchant navies didn't seem to care too much about such things.

Thanks, David, I thought so. Yes, the acrylic one certainly needs to be waxed or sprayed with Teflon-spray. The 'real' gesso would sand off easily and may not need waxing, but I never worked with it.

Phil, I am aware of Marquardt etymologie of the term 'schooner' as he had published it (in German) also in an article in our association's journal LOGBUCH. As to the terminology, the term 'schooner sail' is probably borrowed from German, where it describes a sail exactly the way you did. I find attempts to trace lineages of sail-plans and insisting on specific names for certain sail-plans sometimes futile and the people of the time often did not make the distinctions we tend to make today or were so particular about them. I think one observation one can make is that over the years ships gradually began to loose their square yards (probably as the result of socio-economic pressured due to rising seamen's wages, which let to a reduction in crews). In this way brigs lost the square sails on the main mast to become hermaphrodite brigs (in German Schonerbrigg). At the same time at least some acquired gaffs on the fore-mast on which a fore-and-aft sail could be set in suitable conditions. Due to the hardware in the way, such as boats or deck-houses they initially did not have booms. These were the Schonersegel (in German) to indicate that the rig now was a schooner, rather than a brig. Eventually, of course the foremast lost its topgallant mast and the topmast carried just one or two square sails, to turn it into a top-sail schooner. It appears, that in Europe 'schooner sails' only acquired a boom, when schooners became purely fore-and-aft rigged in the last days of sail, but it varied from country to country. Roach and gore do not appear to me unusual terms. I understand that roach is the extra cut of sail cloth that makes the belly of a sail, noticeable when flattened out as convex foot of the sail. Gore, I understand is the arched part of a square sail that allows it to clear stays. By the description of Marquardt's book it seems that I should get hold of a copy one day. Not sure I ever looked at it in nature. 'Banyan' here on the forum was a personal friend of his, I never met him unfortunately in person, as he had left Germany for good before I seriously got into this 'scene', but when I prepared the obituary for him for the LOGBUCH, I got myself somewhat acquainted with his background and personal history. I don't that he had been very familiar with Mediterranean craft in the widest sense and studied the interrelations between the Arabs, the European Mediterranean and the Northern European maritime cultures and how they influenced each other. I tried to pull together his bibliography, but there seems to be no publication that addresses this question. Also, I don't think he spoke any of the Latin languages, so literature in those languages he did not evaluate for his books I believe.

The idea with the gesso is a good one that I have to remember (in the not too distant future I want to attempt to make a clinker-built boat in 1/160 scale, just over 20 mm long). One sees the lines well and I suppose the frames/planks will not stick too well on it either. What kind of gesso did you use, 'real' one or the modern acrylic based one ?

Unfortunately, no one has ever written a comparable book that covers the second and third quarter of the 19th century with modern hindsight. There are quite a few english, french, dutch and german textbooks from that period around. Their shortcoming from a modellers perspective is, that they do not give a lot of details on the seaman's handiwork that goes into rigging a ship. They are mostly written from the quarter-deck perspective, not from the forecastle's.

Still, there are few people, who have done both - but then they are/were either professionals or retired. I can confirm, that writing/producing a reasonably good book is a major effort. I have done a few over the past 30 years or so (not on ship-related matters though).

I don't have Marquardt's book on schooners, so I cannot check, but I am sure he didn't suck the rigging data from his fingers, but must have taken them from the literature of the time. Which works did he reference ? There are numerous textbooks on rigging from the 19th century in different languages, some of them original, some of them translations, and some of them have copied from others. Concerning terminology, this can be quite a contentious field, as even textbooks of the time in the same language may not agree. Much of the currently used terminology has developed in the North Sea regions and seems to mix English, Dutch, Low German, and perhaps some Frisian and Danish. French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian terminology is another can of worms. Interestingly, the Austrian-German terminology is strongly influenced by the Italian Adriatic terminology, which is were the Austrian navy operated. Marquardt was a native German speaker and he emigrated to Australia as a mature adult. So, I am quite sure that he would have mixed German and English terminology, at least on more obscure subjects.

If you have the technical ability to produce blocks of the correct size, why not do it ? Making your own blocks is not that difficult. 1/32" or even 1/16" is quite a substantial difference on something that is 3/16" or 4/16" long, that's 25% difference. If you don't have anything to compare it with and don't know the subject, you may not notice. However, say on a yard there will be row of blocks with different functions and for different rope sizes and then you will notice, when the blocks do not have the proper relative size. Also, the size of the rope (and to some extent its function) determine the size of blocks. The diameter of the sheave depends on the diameter of the rope, as thicker rope is difficult to bend around a small sheave and will require a lot of force to pull it through (and the rope may be damaged, by a too tight bend, at least over time). The width of the sheave and, hence, of the shell also depends on the diameter of the rope - it should run easily through, but not be so wide that it has too much slack. So you will have to have the correct block size for each rope size and vice versa. Having said that, there are practical limitations for a model. On the real ship you may have 20 or so rope diameters, but on a model you may reduce this to half a dozen, particularly, when you buy in rope. When you make your own, you have more possibilities. However, these may also be limited to available yarn thicknesses. So the summary aswer would be to be as precise as your abilities (that will grow with experience) and the available materials allow.

Somehow missed this log so far and will have to go over it in detail, in particular with respect to the hull construction technique. G.L. on this forum is currently building and 'Argenteuil Clipper', which are French descendents of the 'sandbaggers', btw.

These Mediterrenean boats are mostly very colourful, makes nice change. I was wondering, how this high capstan was worked, it doesn't look very stable.

Another log I missed so far. Will now stay tuned !

And I thought you were still in the middle of the planning phase ... Will be watching this space !