wefalck

I kind of suffer from the same disease: not enough space ... one soution I decided upon some time ago was to tackle only projects that can be drawn on an A4-sheet ... for bigger projects I would scan the plans and correct them for distortions as mentioned above. You then can print out (again checking for distortions) as many working copies as you need. For individual parts I usually print them out even at a magnification (say 10x) and add measurements by hand. This allows you to correct for additive errors due to line thicknesses etc. The overall part has to have the correct size and you can correct your measurements to fit into the overall size. In other words, you arrive at a sort of graphical cooking-book from which to work. I have either the sheet flying around my work-table or fix it to light-weight clip-board.

A displacement hull driven by sails cannot go beyond the theoretical hull speed you mentioned, raked mast or not. Sails just cannot supply enough energy in order to overcome the cavitation effects at the end of the hull that would develop. Before towing-canals and the theoretical foundation (e.g. Froude) were developed, ship designers experimented by feel and looking for examples in nature. As you noted, it is the combination of design and implementation parameters that determine, whether a given ship is fast or not. Changing this combination by trim, for instance, can change the performance rapidly. However, as I said before, raking masts can make a particular ship faster, but not necessarily so - but it certainly makes it look faster, which can be important in both, a naval and a commercial context. A fast looking ship is likely to attract more business. This is why the ocean-liners of old were given raking funnels. At a time when ship designers experimented with waterlines, where the main breadth was above the middle, i.e. that had very sharp, even hollow lines forward, raking the mast may have brought the centre of gravity of the sail plan closer to the centre of gravity of the body plan, thus reducing the tendency to dig in. The same could have been achieved by stepping the mast further aft, but then the mast would have come to close together, partially blanketting each other. When in the later 1850s the hulls became longer and the sharpness more evenly distributed between the forward and rear section, the need for raking masts disappeared. One should also distinguish between naval and commercial practices. Commercial ships need to be able to maintain a steady speed across all weather conditions in order to achieve short travel times, i.e. the average speed is important, while for naval ships often the top speed is the important criterion.

I tend to think that it also depends on the type of ship you are building. Pre-industrial ships were built without any machinery and everything was shaped by hand - this can be reproduced by hand-work (apart perhaps for the tedium of sawing timber to size). Industrial-age ships increasingly tend to have geometrically well defined parts, which would have been produced using machinery, which in turn are easier to reproduce using also machinery. It is also a question of the scale you are working in. Bigger parts are easier to handle manually than small parts that may require only minimal amounts of material to be removed, which is easier to do with the controls of lathe or milling machine.

Mast rake is also a matter of fashion as the centre of gravity of the sailplan can also moved aft during the design or building phase, thus moving aft the fulcrum that acts on the hull and makes it dive into the sea. It is noticeable that a pronounced rake was fashionable from around the mid-1830s to about the mid 1850s. The 'true' clippers of the late 1840s to late 1850s, though having comparatively little bouyancy forward, mostly did not have very raked masts. The rake seems to have been also more pronounced on schooners and some brigs than on barques and full-rigged ships.

Excellent attitude to shipmodelling ... one would hope, that one day these insights will be written up in some way more stable than on a forum

Well, saying of a Hamburg ship that it is German before 18.01.1871 is still correct, as it were the German states before then. Finding conclusive plans for German merchantmen is quite difficult due to the archival losses.

Quite fascinating how much pictorial evidence and real thing from that period. BTW, nice build !

The Donatelli is indeed a very good book that has also a section on the ergonomics of handling a gondola. The museum owns several historical gondole and numerous models. The lines taken off a mid-19th century gondola are also reproduced in Pâris' Souvenirs de la Marine. Here are some pictures of relevant craft from the museum in Venice: http://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/venezia/museonavalevenezia-2.html

The owner of the Web-site quoted above is Gilberto Penzo. He probably is the expert on Venetian boats and has written a host of books on the subject. Friendly gentleman too, I visited him a couple of times in his (work)shop. Here's a list of publications on the subject: ANONYM (1987): Boats of Venice – Le Barche di Venezia.- 192 p. CHAPELLE, H.I. (1957): The Gondola.- The Mariner’s Mirror, 43: 158. CROVATO, G., CROVATO, M., DIVARI, L. (1975): Barche della Laguna Veneta.- 136 p., Venezia (Arsenale Cooperativa Editrice). DONATELLI, C. (1994): Gondola. An Extraordinary Naval Architecture.- 160 p. (arsenale editrice). GARGASACCI NEVE, G. (1979): La Gondola, storia, tecnica, linguaggio.- 69 p., 15 Taf., Venezia (Arsenale Coop. Ed.). GIUPONI, G. (1985): Arte di far Gondole.- 80 p. + 3 Taf., Venezia (Assoc. Settemari). MUNEROTTO, G. [Ed.] (2009): Dizionario Illustrato Storico-Tecnico die principali termini di Construzione navale e marineria Veneziana.- 223 p., Venezia (Mare di Carta). MUNEROTTO, G. (1994): Gondole. Sei secoli di Evoluzione nella storia e nell'arte.- 103 p., Venezia (il Cardo Editore s.r.l.). PENZO, G. (1992): Il Bragosso.- 255 p., Venezia (Libreria Editrice). MUNEROTTO, G. (2001): La Batèla. Umile protagonista.- 64 p., Venezia (Mare di Carta). NACCARI, M. (1999): A Venezia una gondola dalla epoca "americana".- Newport Yacht Digest, 95: 94-95. PATMORE, D. (1950): The Plight of the Gondolier.- Country Life, CVII: 298-9. PENZO, G. (1996): Barche Veneziane – Catalogo Illustrato dei pianti die costruzione.- 90 p., Venezia (Libreria Editrice). PENZO, G. (1999): La Gondola - Storia, progettazione e costruzione della più straordinaria imbarcazione tradizionale di Venezia.- 254 p., Venezia (Cicero). PENZO, G. (2000): Navi Veneziani. Catalogo illustrato die piani die costruzione - Venetian Ships. An Illustrated Catalogue of Draughts.- 160 p., Trieste (LINT - Editoriale Associati s.r.l.). PENZO, G. (2000): Un restauro integralista. Il ripristino dell’ ANNAMARIA.- Arte Navale, 1(1): 50-54, (AR.CO Edizoni). PENZO, G. (20022): Barche Veneziane, Catalogo Illustrato dei pianti die costruzione - Venetian Boats, an illustrated catalogue of draughts.- 234 p., Venezia (Libreria Editrice). PENZO, G., POLO, F., SCARPA, F., TAMASSIA, M. (2005): Maestri d’ascia. Costruire barche a Venezia.- p., Venezia ( Marsilio Editori). PERGOLIS, R., PIZZARELLO, U. (1999): Le Barche di Venezia – The Boats of Venice.- 179 p. + XVI Taf., Venezia (Libreria Editrice Il Leggio). PIZZARELLO, U. (1984): Boote in Venedig.- 72 p., Venezia (L’Altra Riva). RUBIN DE CERVIN, G.B. (1956): The Evolution of the Venetian Gondola.- Mariner’s Mirror, 42(3): 201-18. RUBIN DE CERVIN, G.B. (1978): Bateaux et batellerie de Venise.- 205 p., Lausanne (Edita Lausanne/Vilo Paris). BTW, Penzo also sells kits based on his drawings ...

This topic has been discussed already several times on this forum and I apologise for posting again the two pictures below that show what the coppering really looks like (albeit reconstructed): DON FERNANDO II E GLÓRIA (1843) in Lisbon Two observations: - plates overlap top-down and fore-aft, meaning that the process started at the keel and worked upward, and back to forward - the nailing causes depression - there are no protruding nail-heads; the reason is that the plates were fastened on a layer of felt soaked in tar. Assuming that they are pressed/stamped, you can improve those plates from the kit by gently rubbing them on the side with the protrusions with a piece of round hardwood on a cutting mat. This pushes the protrusions back and leaves slight dimples. One has to play a bit with the amount rubbing and the pressure applied. They are then to be fastened with the side that showed the protrusions inside, i.e. the other way around from what most people would do. Incidentally, the copper-green colour, as shown on the second picture, only appears when the ship is in dry-dock for prolonged periods. The 'service colour' is a dull copper-brown, as on the first picture.

I tend to think that in a well-done glue-joint the glue does act more like a tenon between the two pieces of wood; it sort of keys into the surface roughness, while the high points touch. The glue should not form a separate layer between the pieces, as if you were glueing say two pieces of platic with a contact cement.

Whom are you telling ... just watching this at the airport on my way to my 93 year old mother. Still she comes along promisingly!

Nice work ! I am just wondering, why the bar in front of the freeing-ports are outside of the bulwark - I know the arrangement with them inside, which has the objective to keep objects/people inside ...

These blackening agents rely on redox reactions by which either copper carbonate (CuCO3), magnetite (Fe3O4), or selenium oxide (SeO2) are deposited on the metal surface. This would require a electrochemically less stable metal in the alloy. Whether it works for a given alloy probably depends on how much say copper is contained in it.

I have never been entirely happy with the precision of mitre-boxes, regardless of their size. It is quite tricky to have the right thickness of the saw, thick enough to not wobble in the slots and thin enough to not get stuck. A micro-mitre saw as described in the previous post might be, indeed, a good idea. Perhaps one could also construct one on the basis of the Xacto-sawblades.

Have used it since the late 1970s. Today, I am suspending it in a frame and soak it with acrylic paint. From this panels are cut and stuck together with PVA glue, likewise the doublings etc. If required, single panels can be given a slightly different colour to indicate repairs. Boltropes are stuck on with PVA glue.

Admiral Pâris, the then director of the Musée de la Marine, had models made of almost all the vessels shown in the 'Souvenirs'. They were rarely on show, however, in recent years.

Strange weave, looks, as if long stalk have been used in one direction and something more pliable in the other. I gather the rough vertical stichings hold together different panels. I have simulated such stichings on silk-span using very narrow stiching, nearly zero step-width, on a zig-zag-stiching sewing machine. In order to stabilise the flimsy silk-span, I attached it with a few blobs of glue to a piece of silkpaper (copy paper) outside the sail area. Once the stiching is done, the paper can be ripped out with caution.

Such capstans certainly existed, at least on 18th and 19th century large warships. Whether they have been used in earlier periods, I don't know.

I gather the key point is to somehow reproduce the somewhat coarse structure (in comparison to woven fabric) of the rice-straw mats. What is a detriment in representing small-scale sails, could be used here advantageously: the woven structure of silk-span, silk-screen, or the likes. In the past, I did put together sails from individual panels (this has been discussed several times on this forum already). I spread out a suitable piece of cloth in a (make-shift) frame and soaked in varnish. I used cellulose varnish the last time, but would now switch to acrylics because of their greater flexibility. The reason I used cellulose varnish was that by adding more varnish, you can kind of 'weld' the panels together. That is ok for set sails, but the cellulose varnish is brittle and that makes it difficult to fold sails. The silk-span soaked in varnish when dry was cut into strips the width of the panels and then stuck together with minimal overlapping. Doublings and so on were added in the same fashion. For this I am working on a piece of cardboard with the sail drawing stuck to it and the whole covered in cling-film. Once the sail is complete, the bolt-rope is stuck with PVA glue or acrylic varnish - that is for Western sails. I believe sails made from matting do not have bolt-ropes (at least in the South Pacific they don't have). Instead of acrylic varnish, you may want to use acrylic paint right away to give the sail the right colour. It would also be possible to spray-paint the sail before adding the bolt-rope, if needed. As noted before, I would then give the sail a wash with a very dilute darker paint, so that the paint accumulates in the 'holes' of the weave, or dry-brush it with a lighter colour to highlight the threads (strips of straw as it was). Another way to apply highlights is to rub a white colour-pecil lightly over the sail.

I didn't need the silk screen yet, but I know that you can get it in calibrated mesh-counts.

BTW in the last few numbers of NEPTUNIA there has been a series of articles (albeit in French) on traditional Japanese boats: https://www.aamm.fr/neptunia/derniers_numeros For understanding boats from other cultural areas it is also important to understand how they were used and handled. Often such boats have features that look anything but functional to our eyes. I find it rather difficult to model such features - I have to understand the function in order to reproduce a part, whether as a drawing or as a model. As to sails: I have tried to reproduce sails woven from strips of pandanus-leaves on South Pacific craft by soaking 'silk-span' in acrylic paint. But this was in a 1:90 scale. At a larger scale a heavier silk may do and perhaps some dry-brushing over a base paint in order to enhance the structure. One could also think of a fine wire-mesh soaked in paint. It also would depend on the kind of weave that was used for these mat-sails.

I do have indeed one book on Japanese house-building and a host of books on Japanese art. As I said, there seems to have been a variety of books published on Japanese carpentry including boatbuilding over the past 20 years or so.

Not sure we can ever do this ... but we can try to understand, how and perhaps why certain constructional detail are done in a certain way. There is also the effect of historical policies that forbade Japanes ship to venture further out into the high seas. I seem to remember that there were edicts that limited the seaworthiness of boats and ships. In consequence there has also been very little, if any, echange with other peoples with regard to shipbuilding techniques. I wonder, whether shipbuilder would have examined (or have been allowed to) the occassional Chinese wreck washed up on the Japanese shores or the European ships and boats.

Apparently Simmons, R. (1812): The Sea-Gunner`s Vademecum, Being a New Introduction to Practical Gunnery.- London (Steel). has tables with the sizes of breech-ropes and tackles for all guns. I don't have a copy of this book and didn't check, whether there is a digital version of it on the Web, but it may be worthwhile researching.