wefalck

I fully agree with the previous comments ! I have never heard of the Baranovsky landing-guns. This must be a Russian patent. Do you have more information ont them. Is it really a landing-gun, because the pedestal looks more like a ship's gun? Or is it to be dismounted and then mounted onto a landing-carriage?

I would echo the previous speaker concerning the praise! Didn’t realise before how complex the peak-halliard is. Haven’t seen anything like that before. A couple of bridles yes …

Glad to hear that you are in full swing again !!! Such pre-1880s subjects are rarely seen in railway modelling and there is almost nothing commercial available from that period, I think, regardles of scale/gauge. I am not an active railway modeller, but always thought that something from the 1860 to 1880 period would be nice to create ...

This article provides great insight into the dozen or more layers of paint identified on HMS VICTORY. They also tried to date the various layers, which led to the ship's current paint-scheme, I believe. Vale, B. (2020): Pitch, Paint, Varnish and the Changing Colour Schemes of Royal Navy Warship, 1775-1815: A Summary of Existing Knowlege.- The Mariner’s Mirror, 106(1): 30-42. This may be more reliable than more or less contemporary paintings.

Eric McKee in his 'Working Boats of Britain' looked a bit into the mechanics/ergonomics of rowing and I think gives some dimensions, if I remember correctly, for spacing thwarts, inboard vs. outboard lengths of oars etc. Rowing efficiency, both from the purely physical perspective as well as from the physiological perspective is quite complex. While in the 18th/19th century, of course, there were no scientific studies on this, people had a lot of experience. I gather there are in principle x different rowing arrangements in ships' boats: - one man per thwart with two oars (in small boats only) - one man per thwart with one oar (single bank) - two men per thwart with one oar each (double bank) - four men per thwart with two men per oar (in large boats only) You will need an inboard length of the oar of around 3 feet minimum to give a reasonable fulcrum, whereby one hand is placed on the handle and the other more or less at shoulder width further towards the thole pins. This means that you would need a minimum of around 6 to 7 feet for a double banked boat, while a single-banked one could be as narrow as about 4 feet, with the men off-set to each side of the boat. Faster, lighter boats could have proportionally longer oars with wider space between the thwarts to allow for longer strokes, propelling the boat faster, while heavy working boats would have closer spaced thwarts with shorter oars, as here you need the 'torque' of the oars at slower speed.

Kind of inflatable 'camels' ...

This little ships got very crowded in places, particularly on the foredeck and one wonders how they managed to work them.

Of course, I didn't scroll back through the posts. I hope a good year later the hand is on the mend!

Experience shows, that in the modelling realm, these values are not so important. You will get a feeling for what works. It is different in the professional world, where efficiency is money.

Looks is what counts in the end, what is inside is nobody else's business

The shipyard has been on a somewhat extended summer-shutdown, including the drawing-office (which was not quite planned so, but the heat at my abode in Spain, just made me not feel like working too much on the computer …). Thank you very much for all the likes and encouragement that has been accumulating since the last update! ***************** The Jolly-Boat Rather than doing the second cutter, I am now tackling the jolly-boat. This is the smallest boat of the complement, at 6 m (= 19’8”). I am in for challenge, as I plan to build this open and fully equipped, ready to be lowered in case of man-over-board or a similar emergency. I did not find an earlier drawing, but the drawing in the 1911 issue of the ‘BRIX’ is quite detailed, although it is for the karweel-planked version, while I will kit out WESPE all with clinker-built boats. It appears that the frames are drawn to the inside of the planking, which is exactly what I need. The arrangements for the keel and stem-/stern-post will be somewhat different from what I did for the other boats, as the bulkheads will only act as formers. Drawing of Class 1 jolly-boat from Brix (1911) The laser-cut framework will be infilled with hard foam (Rohacell™) as before and then covered in cling-film to prevent the frames etc. from sticking to it. Below is the laser-cutting template for the main structural components. The thin strips on the right will become the ‘bent-in’ frames. Other parts will be drawn to fit as I am going along. Laser-cutting templates for the formers and main structural components of the jolly-boat. I will also need to still draw a base-board for the construction process, that has notches for the upper ends of the frames to rest in. To be continued ....

Ras, sorry can't help you there with any substance. Looking through my list of literature, I found a couple of references that might be helpful: Anonym (1914): Nautical Terms - Motor Boats - Marine Gasoline Engines - Management of Marine Gasoline Engines - Motor-Boat Navigation - Motor-Boat Rules and Signals.- p., Scranton (International Textbook Company). - available as eBook, but I don't have the link anymore. OVERTON, G.L. [Ed.] (1926): Catalogue of the Collection in the Science Museum. Water Transport. VI. Marine Engines & VII. Marine Boilers.- ? p., London (H.M. Stationary Office). - I don't have a copy of this catalgoue, but you could have a look at the on-line resources the Science Museum in London now offers: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/search/objects/categories/marine-engines?page[number]=1 I have also a few books on early German boat-motors, but this is likely not to be very helpful here. The (practical) pioneers for IC motors in boats were first the Danes and then the Dutch and Germans, I believe.

I found the clock- or watch-wheels are too thin and their teeth normally are too deep to represent such gears satisfactorily. Try to work out the number of teeth on the respective wheels by counting e.g. a quarter of the circumference, or whatever is visible. You then can try to find on-line some (old) engineering textbooks that give you an idea of the relative proportions of the teeth. On this basis you can draw on the computer an enlarged image of the gear (it's a lot simpler and precise to draw at 20:1 or 10:1 scale than at the original 1:50 scale). The print it out at the right size and stick two carefully aligned copies onto each side of the material that you are going to use. No you can use files or even a skalpel to shape the teeth. If on the model you won't be able to see parts of the gear, you don't really need to shape the teeth and save yourself time. Make sure that for meshing gears you draw the same 'modulus' or 'diametral pitch' (check on Wikipedia what this means). Of course, such gears probably wouldn't really work, but they can be a good representation - better than clock- or watch-wheels.

In any case, in real practice it would not be possible to wrought the ring closed with the rope through (with or without thimble) - the heat would burn your rope. The same applies, when bending the hooks from wire and (silver-)soldering the ring closed. One has to follow full-size practice and splice the becket after leading it through the ring. In small scales, one may need to fake the splice and hide the joint under the seizing.

In principle, fillers are a good idea, particularly, when bulkheads are thin and spaced wide apart. The need for them also depends on how thick the planking will be - thin planks tend to kink much more than thicker ones, of course. In your particular case, however, I have the feeling that fillers might not really be needed, as your bulkheads are quite thick and closely spaced. The wood used for the fillers should be about the same hardness as the bulkheads, if it is too soft, you might sand hollows into them between the bulkheads, if it is too hard, it is a lot of work to shape them. Looking at your model, I have the feeling that you might want to define the rabbet line better. It looks, as if you won't have much space for the planking above the bulkheads in the midship section. But then I don't know, how you will construct the keel.

на здоровье!

Hi Michael, didn't hear from you for a while, hope things are ok!?

Another project that I missed until today ... although I would be mentally/historically on the other side of the fence

Keep it coming !

How could I possibly have missed this new project since May! A (a non-selfpropelled) derrick lighter after some 1880s plans has been on my projects list for decades ... looking forward to see your solutions for the derrick and the machinery.

Jon, I did not do any systematic research on this, so some of my observations are rather conjectural: The layout of European and North-American vessesl around the middle to late 19th century was quite different. In virtually all cases the crew-quarters in Europe were forward (with all the inconveniences described quite graphically by Dana in his book). The kitchen, fuel storage and storage of other combustible materials, such as lamp-oil and paint, where in a 'caboose' (with the original meaning of word), that is a mobile deckhouse that was tied down with iron rods. Accomodation for the captain/skipper/owner and perhaps the mate was in the rear. Sometimes it also housed the skippers family, at least the wife and below-school-age children. To provide more head-room from around the 1850s on the rear deck was raised as a poop. To the contrary, in America a larger deckhouse was constructed that accomodated the whole crew and in a forward compartment the kitchen. This could have been an autochtonous development in America to provide a more healthy living space, but could have been also a tradition that was brought across the pond by Scandinavian shipbuilders/mariners. As an exception to the above discussed European layout, Scandinavian lumber-traders seem to have had larger deckhouses. The reason was that they needed to have bow-ports in order to be able to stow long pieces of timber and the crew accomodation forward would have been in the way. By the same logic, moving the skipper's quarters onto the deck gave more room for long timber. I would doubt that 'hot berthing' was used on these traders, it was more common on certain naval ships. If you calculate say a 7' headroom in the deckhouse, this would allow you to have three bunks above each other plus a storage space for the seamen's chest under the lowest bunk. Thus in a 15' long deckhouse you could sleep 12 crew. You would need around 4' to 5' between the sides of deckhouse and the bulwark to work the sails etc. BTW, I was wondering about the rather tall 'skylight' on your deckhouse that made it look a bit like a 'caboose' (in North-american railway sense). If there was a skylight at all, I would have thought it be rather low in order to clear the main-boom, which you want to have as low as possible in order to bring the meta-centre of the sailplan down. When estimating crew numbers, I would think that four men per mast would be sufficient, but it depends on the size of the square sails that need to be handled. In Europe smack-type ships were sailed with three hands, including the skipper and a boy, while schooners may have had six hands and small brigs perhaps eight - which is why many brigs were converted to brigantines, which saved a quarter of the staff-cost and the cost of maintaing the square-rig gear of the main-mast without loosing much of the sailing capacity.

I am not an expert on kits, but it seems that the laser-cut kit by Master Korable are setting standards as far as the precision and ease of building is concerned, judging by the various building logs here and on other fora. They apparently also require a minimum set of tools only. I cannot speak from experience, as I grew into this hobby since my childhood, but it may be advisable, when diving into the deepe end, to takle a boat-kit first, rather than a ship-kit as ones mentioned in your post. Ships are quite complex 'beings' and it is easy, even with a good kit, to get lost, when you don't have a good feeling for how a ship is actually constructed. And once you get lost, you may become frustrated and give up, which would be a pity. Also, one should not underestimate the challenge of rigging and you may actually spend more time on it than on building the hull (particularly with laser-cut kits) - there are very few short-cuts for rigging-job well-done.

Stay away from cyanoacrylates for coppering, as it tends to stain the copper. A solvent-based contact cement is the best option.

For an European eye these American deckhouses have a strange appearance, like a log-cabin that has floated onto the aft-deck during a storm 😏

Veggies are for softies and women ... and they were expensive. The fishing trips would have lasted only a day or two, depending on success and weather conditions.