wefalck

Wish I had even the space for the bandsaw ...

Terredo navalis is not a worm, but a mollusc, a mussel-species, btw. The material under the coppering was felt, soaked in (wood) tar. There have been (partially) clinker-built naval cutters in Great Britain. Unless one knows more about the provenance of the model in the museum, it will be impossible to say, whether it is a correct representation of the vessel in question. If the model was built in the 19th century, then it would have been built after it was captured by the Swedish. Why would one do that and on what basis ? Is there anything on her in the Swedish archives ? One would need to research more on the actual vessel in order to find out, whether it could have been clinker-built.

As a matter of fact, clinkering, being the traditional Germanic way of construction, has been much more and longer prevalent than many people are aware of. Today we think of Viking ships and then modern rowing boats. However, the Dutch built major ships with clinkered bottoms well into the 17th century and many smaller vessels were partially clinkered well into the 19th century. Therefore, the original question is not quite out of place. Perhaps one should turn the question around and ask, whether any vessel meant to venture into waters infested with borers would have been built clinker, or not rather carvel for easy application of the copper sheathing. As noted above, applying copper sheathing to a clinker hull would be extremely labour-intensive and would require very careful work to ensure a good closure of the seams. Even applying the underlying felt-layer would be labour-intensive to install. So, this would just not be an economic proposition. By the time coppering was in common use, the technology of carvel-building was well-established all around Northern Europe. So there would have been no reason to built a vessel destined to sail in warmer water in clinker-fashion.

The point is that a Russian clinker ship from the Eastern Baltic is unlikely to be coppered, unless it was meant for overseas trade. The Baltic there is almost fresh water. There would also be a high risk of ripping off the coppering, if there was any ice.

I gather it could be, but never was. Clinkered boats normally did no venture into waters with Terredo navalis at least at a time, when coppering was used.

Not sure, what 'white stuff' and 'black stuff' actually refers to. However, the bottom of wooden ships had to be protected from various environmental effects and threats. These effects and threats depend on the type of environment the ships is operating in. Wood is degrading when exposed to (salt) water and various kinds of aquatic plants and animals like to attach themselves to ships (fouling) - their movement provides a steady oxygen and nutrient supply. It was discovered long ago that (wood) tar does preserve the wood and also has some antifouling properties. However, the tar does not deter terredo navalis, the mollusc that loves to dig its way into wooden structures. Terredo navalis up to the late 20th century did not occur north of Channel and, hence, protection with tar was sufficient for ships operating in the Baltic and the North Sea. Most small ships and boats in these waters would have been seen with black bottoms. In waters south of the Channel some more serious protection was needed and various concoctions were brewed together at various times. A major ingredient in many of these was lime or chalk, which has anti-fouling properties due to its high pH-values (around 10). Such high pH values are not normally tolerated by plants and animals, so they stay away from it. Due to the chalk or lime contents, the bottoms would have had a sort of white appearance. I am not aware of 'paints' being used on ships bottoms before the arrival of iron ships around the middle of the 19th century. It would seem conceivable, however, that a lime-based anti-fouling concoction be coloured by adding iron-oxide with a view to make it look like coppering, which attains under water a reddish dull-brownish colour. This could explain the colour of the model above. Another explanation is that the paint was added during a misguided 'restoration' effort at a time, when ships' bottoms typically were some sort of iron-oxide red, which in itself originally probably mimicked the colour of coppering.

Ed, your earlier post made me unsure about my own logic, as indeed one 'vector' of the increased diameter of the strand points into the axial direction of the rope. However, I think that the increased diameter of the strands leads to a subtle steepening of the helix and, therefore, to a shortening of the rope.

Lovely boat 👍

Do the ropes really become longer as humidity increases ? I thought the opposite: the fibres increase in diameter not length when swelling and, hence, the individual strands of a rope too; as both fibres and strands form helices, the helices should become steeper upon swelling and, hence, the rope shorter ...

Nice piece of engineering 👍

Without wanting to pre-empt Ed, I don't think the stays are spliced, but tied together and served over ? They could be set by attaching a tackle to the loose end (above the area that would be tied) and then tying the two shanks together, while the tackle was still on. The fairleads in 'action' were indeed also a detail I noticed !

This thread is quite old and I don't recall having seen it before, neither did I recall ever having come across the term 'clump-block'. Intrigued I consulted my 1908 edition of Paasch's 'From Keel to Truck', which is the Five-Language-Edition. Paasch gives as Spanish translation for 'clump-block' the term 'vigota' and for 'dead-eye' the term 'vigota ordinaria'. When you 'google' for pictures of 'vigota', it actually shows you 'dead-eyes'. So there seems to be a bit of modern confusion between what the terms means. In all the other languages there is a clear difference - except for the Italian, where 'bigotta' can mean a 'dead-eye' and a 'clump-block'. As to 'sheet-blocks': these have to noses at the upper end that are meant to prevent the sheet become wedged between the shell and other ropes.

Yes ? To me the drawings looked right.

Don’t have that much experience on wood, used this scraper on Plexiglas. However, dense wood with little pronounced grain, such as box, pear, or cherry seems to work best. Ideally, the grain should run along the batten. If it is slightly oblique, never scrape against the raising grain, or the scraper will dig in. As the name says, you scrape, you don’t really cut - unlike with a plane. Repeated light touches are the ‚secret‘.

But it has to be an incandescent bulb, not a LED-filament bulb ! The latter will emit very little heat in comparison.

"Perhaps this is a just another case of: you get what you pay for, ..." - Unfortunately, even buying brands doesn't safe you from this. Perhaps this is not the case with long-established reputable tool-brands, but in many other business areas, particular consumer goods, poor quality control and pressure from shareholders to keep returns up leads to undermining trust in brands. This particularly affects the medium-price ranges: if you buy very cheap, you know that you well get poor quality, if you buy from high-level brands you probably can expect reasonable quality, but in the middle you never know. At least for machine-tools from cheap(ish) sources, I would consider them as 'materials sets in advanced state of manufacturing': the industrial-type processes have been carried out (which one cannot do at home), but the fitting and fine-tuning still needs to be done - and this is costly, because it is labour-intensive. This approach saves a lot of frustration.

This statement seems to apply to many other 'modellers' supply houses around the world. They have discovered over the last few years tools from other trades, as mentioned above, and that manufacturers often dump 'seconds' that do not fulfill the quality standards of brands on the market. You can find these e.g. von ebay without the mark-up of the modelling houses. To be fair, such supply houses also market sometimes products that are made specifically for them and that you would not find anywhere else.

"... those who can't tie knots tie lots." - that was a good one, have to remember it !

Some loose ends - there most be hundreds As to the clove-hitch vs. lashed eyes: I used two half-turns for the ends of rat-lines so that they returns on themselves. Kind of simulates the eye without an end sticking out as for the clove-hitch. This arrangement can be adjusted easily also for length. Not sure you did this for the lower shrouds, but I am putting a piece of card-board behind the shrouds on which the shrouds and the rat-lines are drawn. This allows me to correct for any distortion and misalignment immediately.

Yes, #2 and 4# represent what I meant by doubling. Adding more turns around the bar will not necessarily add more safety, but it depends really on the specific geometrical situation and the amount of pull on the rope. The seaman will do instinctively the right thing, e.g. if one turn slips, he would add one more, etc. It is difficult to decide this on a theoretical basis. In general, 'less is more', meaning that one would use the least amount of turns and knots possible. Any additional turns and knots makes it more difficult to cast loose a rope in an emergency. It is a sign of poor understanding of seamanship to add unnecessary amount of knots (as many landlubbers have a tendency to do)

You don't need to go around three times before the clove hitch. The first turn of the clove hitch is enough as a break. When talking about doubling, this didn't mean going around twice, but taking the rope in double, i.e. you fold the rope back on itself for a certain length and then go around the bar and tie the knot.

Perhaps to add to what Jud just said and my earlier comments: a sailor (not sure about cowboys for lack of first-hand knowledge) would never hold a rope under strain just like that, he would always take a turn around some convenient rail, bollard, clamp or whatever to use the friction of the rope to break its force (I think cowboys actually have the saddle-knob for that). By crossing the loose end over that turn you can also use the friction between the two parts of the rope, which is very effective - in fact, this would be the beginning of tying a clove hitch. By doing so you have very good control over the rope. Otherwise, a gust may jerk the rope from your hands, or if you fail to let loose, it may jerk you overboard.

I would stack the four of them onto a thin piece of plywood for working on. When starting the 'crossing-out', as the watchmakers call the process of making the spokes, I would drill appropriately sized holes in the respective corners. This gives you the directions for sawing out the rest using a jeweller's piercing saw. As material I would use hard brass, not soft copper. Alternatively, styrene would allow you to easily add the reenforcement ribs by glueing, rather than soldering.

What is 'wicking' - 'soaking' ?

If I can avoid it, I don't buy new tools. Either they are ridiculously expensive or not the same quality as pre-1960s ones. This applies to both, hand- and machine-tools. Just bought a couple of pin-vices, they were relatively cheap and the best ones I have seen on the Internet, but their finish still isn't as good as that of the ones I fished out of junk-boxes on flea-markets (unfortunately, I don't get to flea-markets very often anymore and flea-markets aren't what they used to be). And: as I don't have the time to hone my skills with hand-tools, I have to hone my machine-tools A confirmed tool-junkie.