wefalck
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Everything posted by wefalck
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My knowledge of 17th rigging is limited, but I could imagine that the rope in question could aid in gathering the sail for stowing along the spar.
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With our modern mind-set, which is framed by efforts to increase utility and efficiency, we tend to analyse artefacts in that way, which may be rather misleading. Our ancestors had much less capacity to predict due to the absence of the concept of a 'model' and the lack of methods to quantitatively measure e.g. performance. They may have observed that certain features work better than others and these may then have been slowly adopted - but, as a ship is made up of many different components that interact with each other, such new feature may not have worked everywhere and all the time. Errors or underperformance can be costly in an economic sense or in armed conflict. Hence shipbuilders and seamen were conservative, they preferred to err on the safe side. I gather for every successful innovation that has been recorded in history, there were scores of less successful ones that have sunken into oblivion. So the question of an 'optimal' bowsprit angle can only be answered, if one sets a range of boundary conditions. We can guess the boundary conditions of old, but often we cannot be sure. Traditions and customs can be very pervasive boundary conditions that are not accessible to modern rationale. So, most often we can only observe the facts and can only speculate on the 'why' by trying to understand the 'how'. As to the near-horizontal bowsprits of the late 18th/early 19th century cutters: this may be due to the fact that they often had a running bowsprit, which would be more difficult to manage, if inclined. Also a horizontal bowsprit increases the area of foresails. As to the pitching: the pitching movement is not only determined by the length to breadth ratio and absolute length, but also by the amount of buoyancy in the bow and stern. A ship with good buoyancy at the ends and flaring bow-sections tends to have shorter, but perhaps harder pitching movements and keeps the 'head out of the water'.
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To me that looks like a late 15th century swivvel gun. I don't recall seeing any such breech-loading guns in the early 19th century. The only 19th century guns that were loaded according to a similar principle that come my mind are the French mitrailleuses of the 1860s/70s.- 9 replies
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- cannon
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Well, I used the tape for exactly the same purpose, the laminated tube mentioned above was cut up into mast-hoops ...
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Yes, Michael, I experimented myself with paper, but somehow I was not as successful as Doris ... it is rather impressive, how clean-cut her paperwork is. I like stuff that can be sanded or filed
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Perseverance in collecting 😏 Your picture above shows the thing I was talking about.
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In fact, the watchmakers use the same technique and have for it what are called wax- or cement-chucks. They are essentially flat brass inserts that are screwed into a special arbor. Traditionally heated shellac was used to stick on wheels etc., but now many use 'super-glue'. Shellac is very brittle and any shearing force may pop the part of the chuck. The CA-bond is likely to be more resilient. I am not very fond of this technique, or I am too clumsy. In the absence of a suitable chuck, I may have taken a short piece of round aluminium bar, taken it into the 3-jaw-chuck or a collet, turned a recess to fit the wheel, and then slotted it, so that it can tighten on the wheel, when the chuck or collet are tightened. When using a 3-jaw-chuck, it would be important to use it in the same orientation as it was made to ensure that it is running true. I should add, that the watchmakers had, as an alternative to the wheel-chuck, for very small wheels also collets that had a shallow recess at the front. I am lucky to have also a set of such collets plus a collection of purpose-made collets with a wide range of shallow recess diameters that came out of a watchmaking factory (presumably).
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I appreciate that a continuous metal bulwark of lenght will cause a problem. What about laminated wood shavings ? That may help with the 3D curvature. A further option may be laminated paper strips. I am not terribly fond of paper though, as it is difficult to get a real smooth surface. One could also think of the old-time brown packing-tape that needed to be wetted. It is thin and very compliant. Not sure it is still available, but I used some old stock to make e.g. laminated pipes. With a good coat of sanding filler one can get it smooth.
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Was the original GERMANIA really welded ? I thought that welding was not used in hull construction before the late 1920s, though it was used in constructing superstructures well before WWI. OK, for yachts they sometimes used fancy and innovative techniques long before they became mainstream in general shipbuilding.
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I actually was pondering the same question. I would use a so called wheel-chuck on my watchmakers lathe, but I assume that Valery doesn‘t have such chucks for his lathe ?
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Keith, I did a quick search on the EDUARD and came up with some supplementary information: As you know already she was built as a barkentine in 1898 by the Lübeck (not Lubbock) yard Henry Koch AG, 430 BRT/400 NRT, deplacement 650 t, CWL length 45.72 m, breadth 8.38 m. She was let into the water on 2 July 1898 and handed over to her first owners Seetzen Gebrüder (Hamburg) on 15 August 1898. She was re-registered in Bremen (unknown owner) on 13 March 1901. After being impounded in 1914 in the UK and used on behalf of the Admiralty as coastal vessel CS66. This information is given in a chronical of the shipyard: HAAKER, H. (1994): Die ‘Schiffswerft von Henry Koch AG’.- 224 p., Hamburg (Ernst Kabel Verlag). On page 126 of the above book there is also a picture of her. The original of that picture is in the collection of the 'Museen für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte der Hanstestadt Lübeck' (https://die-luebecker-museen.de/). If she was registered with the Bureau Veritas (as many German ships were) you can go through the digitised versions of the registers here: http://www.zvdd.de/dms/browse-sammlungen/?tx_goobit3_search[extquery]=iswork%3A1&dc=deutschesschiffahrtsmuseumbremerhaven.digiview.gbv.de
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Filling up the space between the bulkheads is probably a good strategy. Several of my German colleagues do this routinely and I also have done this. Makes the hull much more stable and gives you a better image of any sags or bulges than the bulkheads alone. Is probably also simpler than the double-planking.
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HMCSS Victoria 1855 by BANYAN - 1:72
wefalck replied to BANYAN's topic in - Build logs for subjects built 1851 - 1900
I like the metal-work on the ladders, looks kind of posh and good old-style ship-shape Bristol fashion with polished brass- 993 replies
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I knew about these air-cushions for lifting machinery to be levelled etc. as well, but using plastic bags as wedging device in model construction is an idea to file for later use 👍
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Nicely done 👍 Actually, at that scale they would have almost deserved to have real sheaves ... at least I would round the area around the holes so that the rope doesn't make a bend (as seen on so many models), but rather a nice curve. It also reminds me that the Dutch used some odd-shaped blocks, such as the one with the integrated half-clamp to belay the main-sheet.
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Self made clamps and jaws.
wefalck replied to ymperivm's topic in Modeling tools and Workshop Equipment
Not a bad the idea to use allen-keys, they are quite hard and stiff - and I have whole bag full from IKEA -
Not quite I was also cheating with the burr that did not really have the right tooth-profile, but was good enough to look convincing on gears with a maximum diamter of 4 mm. Since I made them, I acquired a (very expensive, but I am also collecting such tools) attachment (a so-called topping-tool) for the watchmakers lathe with which the watchmakers correct the tooth-shape of damaged wheels. This tool comes with a set of profile cutters for tiny (wrist-watch) wheels. I might use it to improve the wheels I already made. BTW, in Banyan's log on his VICTORIA we discussed another method involving just a lathe to cut worm-wheels (say for winches or the gear-rings for training QF guns) using a normal tap for threading as a gear-hob. The worms then are just turned down pieces of the corresponding screw. This method works so well, that people building telescope-mounts use it.
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In engineering one prefers coarser knurls these days, so it is not so easy to find fine enough knurls these days at a reasonable price. Another method on the lathe and without any special tools is the following: stick strip of paper around your chuck or another suitable part on the lathe spindle. This paper should be marked with lines of equal distance and of the number of teeth you want to cut - easy to do with a drawing program on the computer. You also need to put somewhere on the headstock an index mark. Then grind a lathe tool with the desired tooth profile and mount it turned by 90° (i.e. the cutting face towards the headstock) at exactly centre-height. This tool now is operated like a shaper tool on the blank. You would also need to break the lathe spindle, say with a wooden wedge slightly pushed under the chuck. By moving the carriage forward and backward, you can cut one tooth after the other. The gears will not be really functional probably, but good enough for a static display.
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Knurling is an elegant way of cheating in gear manufacturing, if you don't have a milling attachment or a milling machine Here is the set-up I used, but the gears are somewhat smaller: These are the gears as cut off, they still need to be turned on their face. And cutting the rack for training guns on a metal-shaper:
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Reminds me of a ‚Mexican Promotion‘ ... you can stick a star more onto your shoulders, but nothing else changes.
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I think Kortes' representation is pretty accurate, though the curvature is difficult to judge from the angle from which I took this picture: Flagpoles are inclined so that the flag unfolds even without wind and thus becomes recognisable. Why it is curved is anyone's guess, one reason could be that the Dutch in baroque tradition didn't like straight lines and a more practical reason could be that in this configuration the flag is less likely to wind around the pole and thus become unrecognisable. Concerning the low bridge in the picture above, one has to keep in mind that many such fixed bridges were installed from around the end of WW1 on, when motor traffic became more intense and goods shifted onto the roads, requiring bridges with higher load-capacities. The (wooden) draw-bridges, that would have been there before, became also too expensive to maintain at a time, when most boating was for pleasure only. Also smaller 'grachten' (canals) were meant to be accessible only by small boats that were rowed, poled or drawn, not by larger sailing boats.
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