wefalck

Cotgrave's French-English dictionary of 1672 notes that the term 'perrier' seems to be a corruption of 'pierrier'. Canon perrier describes a large caliber gun throwing stones. Perrier as such is translated with 'fowler', i.e. a gun used to hunt (water-)fowl. These guns were often breech-loading in order to be able to be loaded, when under cover. More modern dictionaries refer to the breech-loading variety as 'perrier à boîte', i.e. perrier with a can (the loading chamber). A perrier as such then is a plain swivvel-gun. By the beginning of the 17th century 'perriers à boîte' went out of fashion largely, because they were balistically inefficient and sometime more dangerous to the gunners, than to the enemy. The chamber frame was a dangerous weakness at a time, when materials properties where not understood well enough. Breech-loading guns only became a viable proposition, once the machining technology was advanced enough to produce parts with adequate tolerances and stronger materials, such as cast steel, became available around the middle of the 19th century.

That's a standard solution for stops on old-time machine tools. The stops on my antique milling machine are constructed like this. I stops like this for me lathes, but used M3x0.5 mm screws.

Never use sandpaper on tools, what idea ! For mild de-rusting I use used tea-leaves. The cheaper the tea the better, because you need the tannin, which is a complexing agent and will desolve the ferric oxihydroxides, vulgo 'rust'. Then you can use steel wool of various grades. For polishing one can also use a fine rubber-bonded abrasive block or similar wheels in the hand-held drill. Be cautious not to damage or change the shape machined surfaces that have function, such as sliding ways on tools. One should be able to change the points on a compass. Sometimes they are sort of rivetted in, but one can pull them out using pliers. To function properly the points would need to be ground. The points on the marine-type of compasses can also be ground back into shape on a stone. The inner sides have to be flat and matching and the outer sides have be ground to a point.

There are many photographs of square rigged ships with yards 'cockbilled' in small European ports moored alongside quays or in packs at posts mid-river. The reasons was to not foul each other's yards, when moving around. For instance, in many southern Baltic ports the Scandinavian wood ships were moored vertical to the quay - like modern yacht fashion, but with the bows to the quay, so that the timber could be discharged from the bow-ports. They have invariably their yards cockbilled to allow as many ships as possible on the quay. The degree by which a yard can be braced up depends on the position of the yard relative to the shrouds. In more modern ship the iron cranes and parrels were designed to put the yard further away from the mast in order to clear better the shrouds. Until the middle of the 19th century the degree by which particularly lower yards could be braced was quite limited, perhaps 20° or so.

It may be a good idea to trace/photocopy all parts before building. Then use the kit-supplied materials and when you think that you got the hang of it, you can use the patterns retained to cut the material for another model. Not sure it would be worthwhile to go for expensive stuff such as pear or castello - you also need the equipment to work it !

OK, the Italian is pretty clear. I think they mean that rather than using undiluted glue to dilute it with water. The picture doesn't say anything about soaking the planks completely.

The kit seems to be quite well thought-through - for instance, the notches in the frames, which would have been in every frame of the prototype, are only in the two extreme and the middle frame - this makes for good alignment without forcing. I gather the kit is an interpretation of the Oseberg-Ship and for this a reconstructed plank diagramme would be available. So, the laser-cut planks should fit reasonably well. If you are going for the 50-50 method, keep the planks humid as long as possible so that the glue does not set, while you are manipulating them. Overthinking things - also called procrastination - I am good at too. This can be a wise-approach, when building from scratch, but a kit has already been thought through, e.g. with respect to the building sequence. Hence, one can approach this quite relaxed.

... but also consider that sometimes instructions get lost in translation 😬

NO ! You will end up with rigid planks. Planks are normally soaked in hot water, offered to the hull, held temporarily in position until dry in order to keep their shape and the glued/dowelled. There is a technique, however, by which the planks are soaked and then directly glued on using white glue: when in the correct position the planks are dried and the glue set using a hot (temperature-controlled) soldering iron. I still would not necessarily soak the planks in a glue-water mixture, as the open time for manipulation would be rather short before the glue sets. You may have not finished adjusting the plank before the glue sets.

I made some excentric cam-action pins from aluminium-rod to fit into the holes of these ceramic soldering plates:

Ceramic self-closing tweezers can be got for less than 5€ for three these days in China. They should work even for silver soldering. You can buy the tips seperately and I got some to equip my home-made third-hand with them.

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.

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'.

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.

Have to remember the term ‘bezel wire’ ...

No problem, Keith.

Sounds like a plan 👍

Well, I used the tape for exactly the same purpose, the laminated tube mentioned above was cut up into mast-hoops ...

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

Perseverance in collecting 😏 Your picture above shows the thing I was talking about.

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).

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.

With countersunk rivets and a lot of putty ...

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.

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 ?