wefalck

Perhaps you can post a picture of your problem ? Using a jig, as Pat suggested, is a good idea. One then can stabilise the assembled tackle with clear varnish and install it as a unit.

I am not commenting on the workmanship, it speaks for itself ... However, something looks odd to me - I am sure it is according to the plans, namely that there is a screw-well in front of the rudder, while this seems to be twin-screwed vessel. Such a screw-well would cause a lot of turbulences and cross-flows in front the rudder. Is there any rationale, why this was designed that way ? One explanation, I could think of myself is that improves the turning capability - for the same reason tugs had cut large openings cut into the 'dead-wood' in front of the screw. Any thoughts on this ?

Cute little model to come 👍 Just wondering, why you tore out the bulkheads in areas where they would not be visible anyway ? As others commented already, it is a pity that most of the internal structure put in later will be hidden.

That's Dutch style, the setting-up of the forestay. However, I had exactly the same thought as 'druxey'. The Dutch drill(ed) holes through the stem (which is normally then wider at the top as for those of other nations), which is akin to a fixed dead-eye. I don't comment on the quality of the work, it speaks for itself ...

Both, the sail-plan as well as the underwater body have centres of gravity that shift with the ship heeling and the number and position of sails. As all sailors know, you can change a ships tendency to turn into the wind or away from it by adding or taking away sails at different positions of the rig. This is why certain sails may not be set under certain conditions. Also, on a square-rigged ship certain sails under certain conditions will blanket other sails. In fact, they would not be of use or even detrimental due to increased turbulence and friction. Thus, you often see the main-sail being clewed up or furled in order to not blanket the fore-sail.

A bottom speed of 8000 rpm seems to me also way to fast for brass. I would think 4000 rpm should be the maximum. For wood and two- or single-lip-endmills the 8000 rpm would be ok. Just wondering, whether the bearings on the spindle are actually rated for such high rpms ?

One thing to consider is that many milling machines do not have a lever-actuated quill. If you need to drill many holes, cranking the mill had up and down could be pain. On the other hand, a mill is likely to be more accurate than a drill press, which could be important for using flimsy drills below 0.5 mm diameter. Of course, it is a question of space and budget, but these drill-press stands sold for Proxxon or Dremel etc. hand-held drills all seem to be quite flimsy things without much options for adjusting bearing surfaces to take out wobble. I think there are adapter rings for some of these machines to bring them up to the standard 43 mm throat diameter of DIY power-drills. You then can use them in DIY drill-presses that are much more solid and can be fiddled with to be more accurate. If your budget allows for a mill, there are also so-called 'sensitive drilling attachments', which are essentially a sleeve on an arbor that holds a small drill chuck and can be moved up and down like a quill. These allows to rapidly drill small holes. However, I do not have any personal experience with these.

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 !