wefalck

I can't put my hand on that immediately, but I have seen estimations of sail-cloth weights. It is not so straightforward, as they were numbered and each number refered to a cloth of a certain weight per bolt, that is the roll of fabric of a specified lenght and width. The specifications varied from navy to navy and also where they obtained the fabric, if it was not manufactured in the navy's own manufacture. As for rope, the thickness of a fabric is difficult to define, as it changes with the amount of stretching and the humidity. For this reason, today the thickness still is indirectly given by the weight per unit area (e.g. square metre or square yard). With information on the specific weight of the yarn used and the thread-count, one can make some rough 'guesstimates' of the thickness. However, I would hazard a guess that even the coarsest canvasses would not be much above 3 mm or 1/8" thick, typically less. A german colleague puts a special paper-repair fabric between two layers of silk paper that is arranged in overlapping strips. This repair-fabric is extremely thin (I think about 10 g/sqm) and impregnated with a heat-activated acrylic glue. The resulting sails have the visual appearance of the real thing and are translucent like the real thing. They sails also can be wetted to drape them and thus show them e.g. limp. However, for furled sails I would probably rather go for silkscreen as Allan suggested. Depending on the scale one may even go for paper maché or modelling putty and just make the 'dog ears' in silk-paper or painted silkscreen. What counts is the correct appearance, not what's inside

Depending on how sharp the bow (and the stern here) are, the overlapping section of the lower plank would be sharpened out to near zero over a distance of several plank widths - is it that what you did ? I agree, that clinker-planking can be a bit of challenge, but if it worked, it is very satisfying.

These forged items can be really a pain to fabricate - either a lot of filing/milling from some thick stock or some ingenious way to puzzle them together ... this is, I think, where the power of 3D-printing, perhaps as pattern for investment casting, comes in - but it does take away the charme of well-executed artisanal work

Are you French ? Well, I not normally buy supplies in model stores (anymore), for two reasons: - in many cases these are ordinary materials sold there at elevated prices - I don't buy parts, but make them myself. The last model shop in Paris that I was aware of and that had materials for ship models closed a couple of years or so ago. Certain woods, metals, paper and plastics you can get from BHV or from Rogier & Plé (the art materials dealers). For metals there is also Metaux Tartaix in the 4th Arr. Otherwise you may have to mail order.

Normally, the hole is not covered in this kind of arrangement, particularly, when the tiller is on the upper deck. In bad weather you have a lot of water on the deck anyway. However, the hole appears to be rather large. It needs to be just big enough to allow the full movement of the rudder stem.

Are you going to change the tiller ? I suppose you can unhinge the rudder ? The drawing of the kit shows the version of the rudder with a tenon at the head. You take the rudder and file such a tenon with a shoulder. Then you take a piece of wood about three times as wide as the rudder tenon and as thick as the tiller needs to be. Drill a hole for the tenon and file it rectangular, so that it fits precisely over the tenon. Then you can shape its outside of the tiller. It helps to make yourself a sketch of the rudder with the tenon and the shoulder so that you get the angles right - if you don't put a curvature into the tiller, the angle must be such that the end of the tiller is about 2 cm (= 1 m in 1:50 scale) above the deck.

In principle, it makes sense to have the binnacle windows facing forward, because this protects them from following seas. In this position, however, one would need to have two people to steer the boat, one at the helm and another reading the compass and giving directions to the helms-man. As to the davits: perhaps the dinghy was meant to be stowed hauled clause to the davits, rather than being suspended under them.

Is this your model ? The tiller looks a bit short. In order to work it, one would have to stand on/walk over the hatch. This is not unusual to have to walk over obstacles, but having to stand on the hatch most of the time would be somewhat inconvenient. There are two typical ways in which the rudder is connected: either there is a mortice in the rudder head and the tiller has a tennon, or the other way around. The end of the tiller end should be at about hip height, so often tillers are curved somewhat, to bring the end to that height. BTW, the box with the bell on it, is it facing the right way around ? I gather this is the binnacle stand that should open towards the helmsman. And, the stern davits look a bit too much forward; I think they should protrude further to allow the dinghy to be properly suspended.

Yes ... in his next post

Again, the deck-layout would be helpful. And an idea, based on the opening for the rudder in the transom, what angle the rudder could/should cover - the longer the tiller, obviously the smaller the angle can be for given width of deck. It may be also useful to trawl the Net for images of (old) models (not modern interpretation) of similar vessels and drawings.

Rows of trusses ? Where ?

For tiller steering or for use with a wheel ? What sort of deck-houses and deck-furniture would be in the way ? A deck-plan or other sort of image would be useful to understand what we are talking about.

Well, Johann, you are getting better and better

Tell me about dust ... particularly, when you use the sharpening feature in Photoshop.

I think 'archofo' has them represented in his model of LA CREOLE (1827).

Don't forget ligatures in print, of which there used to be many.

Well, in real life, decks would look pretty flat as they are just sanded/scraped and not treated otherwise.

Well, in German 'Fraktur' (=broken, vs. round) print this was used well into the 1950s, when it was gradually replaced by antiqua-type fonts in which before only foreign language texts were type-set. The long-s was only used inside words, not at the end. I was exposed to this kind kind of print since my early youth, as probably the majority of books in the parental library was printed in that way. Between about 1905 and 1942 schoolchildren were taught a cursive hand called 'Sütterlin' (after its inventor). The reasons for this are complex, but it is rather difficult to read, if you are not used to it - for instance the 'e' looks like an 'n' and also has the long and short 's'. We were briefly taught this in the second year of school, so that we would be able to read letters from older relatives The greek alphabet also uses two 's', depending, where you are in the word, btw.

Seems that you are not letting your slipway getting cold ...

OK, I get the point. Somehow, I assumed that the 'experiment' would be somehow finished as a 'real' model. I myself also like to experiment with different materials, but this is rather driven by the need to make smaller and more delicate parts or to use thinner materials in order to be in scale thickness. Thus for instance, I am currently striving to make 1.5 mm double blocks from laser-cut Canson-paper - the theory in my imagination looks pretty straightforward, but at iteration nine, I still did not manage to produce what I want ...

Yes, avoiding to distort the shell, while fitting the frames would be very important.

How will you taper the spars and work in the square and octogonal sections that they probably have ? Not that I would push the use of card that far, particularly as is will not be visible after painting. I know card-modellers working from printed kits like to push the use of card to the limit, but then the model has a certain 'style' in which the card as such is recognisable. When the card as such is not visible, I would rather use wood or metal for the masts and spars.

Your tracing contrapment is a bit like those DIY tracers with a stack of steel rods in a frame ... It occured to me, that one could also use one of those consumer laser-scanners to produce cross sections and print them onto paper templates.

I have seen people glueing together templates for the outside of the (sawn) frames from short pieces of cardboard, perhaps twice as wide as the planks and overlapping each other. Lucky those, who are building clinker-boats with bent frames

It's like making one side of the four segments of the collet sloping towards the next. So you file from the outside towards the middle of the hole. In fact, one could also use some thick-walled steel tube.