wefalck

I didn't do many of such builds, but the frames getting stuck in the grooves was one of my worries. I indeed edited the lines so that I only had grooves in the garbord area, which fixes the frames at three points, namely in these grooves and locating holes as per Allen's example. If the prototype construction allows it, one could also have grooved keelson. Or, again prototype construction permitting, one could have the grooves in the keel-piece.

Let's see what he responds, but if there was a tumble-home (which makes it actually rather elegant), then one could not remove the boat-shell from the plug - unless the last plank is fitted without the plug. Edit: oops wrote the above, while he was responding ...

The people of the time definitely were much less dogmatic, which today in historic research can cause a lot of confusion, as one and the same ship may be listed under different categories in different ships lists for instance (another reason, of course, is that it may have been re-rigged). I have he feeling that this dogmatism comes from yacht-clubs that in turn were often influenced by navy traditions. A dogmatism that persists in yachtsmen until today. The professionals in the merchant navies didn't seem to care too much about such things.

Thanks, David, I thought so. Yes, the acrylic one certainly needs to be waxed or sprayed with Teflon-spray. The 'real' gesso would sand off easily and may not need waxing, but I never worked with it.

Phil, I am aware of Marquardt etymologie of the term 'schooner' as he had published it (in German) also in an article in our association's journal LOGBUCH. As to the terminology, the term 'schooner sail' is probably borrowed from German, where it describes a sail exactly the way you did. I find attempts to trace lineages of sail-plans and insisting on specific names for certain sail-plans sometimes futile and the people of the time often did not make the distinctions we tend to make today or were so particular about them. I think one observation one can make is that over the years ships gradually began to loose their square yards (probably as the result of socio-economic pressured due to rising seamen's wages, which let to a reduction in crews). In this way brigs lost the square sails on the main mast to become hermaphrodite brigs (in German Schonerbrigg). At the same time at least some acquired gaffs on the fore-mast on which a fore-and-aft sail could be set in suitable conditions. Due to the hardware in the way, such as boats or deck-houses they initially did not have booms. These were the Schonersegel (in German) to indicate that the rig now was a schooner, rather than a brig. Eventually, of course the foremast lost its topgallant mast and the topmast carried just one or two square sails, to turn it into a top-sail schooner. It appears, that in Europe 'schooner sails' only acquired a boom, when schooners became purely fore-and-aft rigged in the last days of sail, but it varied from country to country. Roach and gore do not appear to me unusual terms. I understand that roach is the extra cut of sail cloth that makes the belly of a sail, noticeable when flattened out as convex foot of the sail. Gore, I understand is the arched part of a square sail that allows it to clear stays. By the description of Marquardt's book it seems that I should get hold of a copy one day. Not sure I ever looked at it in nature. 'Banyan' here on the forum was a personal friend of his, I never met him unfortunately in person, as he had left Germany for good before I seriously got into this 'scene', but when I prepared the obituary for him for the LOGBUCH, I got myself somewhat acquainted with his background and personal history. I don't that he had been very familiar with Mediterranean craft in the widest sense and studied the interrelations between the Arabs, the European Mediterranean and the Northern European maritime cultures and how they influenced each other. I tried to pull together his bibliography, but there seems to be no publication that addresses this question. Also, I don't think he spoke any of the Latin languages, so literature in those languages he did not evaluate for his books I believe.

The idea with the gesso is a good one that I have to remember (in the not too distant future I want to attempt to make a clinker-built boat in 1/160 scale, just over 20 mm long). One sees the lines well and I suppose the frames/planks will not stick too well on it either. What kind of gesso did you use, 'real' one or the modern acrylic based one ?

Unfortunately, no one has ever written a comparable book that covers the second and third quarter of the 19th century with modern hindsight. There are quite a few english, french, dutch and german textbooks from that period around. Their shortcoming from a modellers perspective is, that they do not give a lot of details on the seaman's handiwork that goes into rigging a ship. They are mostly written from the quarter-deck perspective, not from the forecastle's.

Still, there are few people, who have done both - but then they are/were either professionals or retired. I can confirm, that writing/producing a reasonably good book is a major effort. I have done a few over the past 30 years or so (not on ship-related matters though).

I don't have Marquardt's book on schooners, so I cannot check, but I am sure he didn't suck the rigging data from his fingers, but must have taken them from the literature of the time. Which works did he reference ? There are numerous textbooks on rigging from the 19th century in different languages, some of them original, some of them translations, and some of them have copied from others. Concerning terminology, this can be quite a contentious field, as even textbooks of the time in the same language may not agree. Much of the currently used terminology has developed in the North Sea regions and seems to mix English, Dutch, Low German, and perhaps some Frisian and Danish. French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian terminology is another can of worms. Interestingly, the Austrian-German terminology is strongly influenced by the Italian Adriatic terminology, which is were the Austrian navy operated. Marquardt was a native German speaker and he emigrated to Australia as a mature adult. So, I am quite sure that he would have mixed German and English terminology, at least on more obscure subjects.

If you have the technical ability to produce blocks of the correct size, why not do it ? Making your own blocks is not that difficult. 1/32" or even 1/16" is quite a substantial difference on something that is 3/16" or 4/16" long, that's 25% difference. If you don't have anything to compare it with and don't know the subject, you may not notice. However, say on a yard there will be row of blocks with different functions and for different rope sizes and then you will notice, when the blocks do not have the proper relative size. Also, the size of the rope (and to some extent its function) determine the size of blocks. The diameter of the sheave depends on the diameter of the rope, as thicker rope is difficult to bend around a small sheave and will require a lot of force to pull it through (and the rope may be damaged, by a too tight bend, at least over time). The width of the sheave and, hence, of the shell also depends on the diameter of the rope - it should run easily through, but not be so wide that it has too much slack. So you will have to have the correct block size for each rope size and vice versa. Having said that, there are practical limitations for a model. On the real ship you may have 20 or so rope diameters, but on a model you may reduce this to half a dozen, particularly, when you buy in rope. When you make your own, you have more possibilities. However, these may also be limited to available yarn thicknesses. So the summary aswer would be to be as precise as your abilities (that will grow with experience) and the available materials allow.

Somehow missed this log so far and will have to go over it in detail, in particular with respect to the hull construction technique. G.L. on this forum is currently building and 'Argenteuil Clipper', which are French descendents of the 'sandbaggers', btw.

These Mediterrenean boats are mostly very colourful, makes nice change. I was wondering, how this high capstan was worked, it doesn't look very stable.

Another log I missed so far. Will now stay tuned !

And I thought you were still in the middle of the planning phase ... Will be watching this space !

As we are getting older, good lighting is important. The eye looses gradually its elasticity and therefore the ability to focus on close items. This can be to some extent compensated for by a greater depth of field, which is effect of narrowing pupilles due to stronger light. By and by I have replaced all the incandescant bulbs in my lamps with LED-bulbs of 150 W equivalent. Due to the waste heat such strong light would have not been possible with tradtional bulbs - it also happened to me that I burnt myself on halogen bulbs. I also bought a sort of indoor LED flood-light that I installed above the worktable. It was actually cheaper than a strong LED-bulb. Some people advocate daylight LED-bulbs (5600 K), but I prefer 'warm' ones (3600 K - 4000 K), as they give a more pleasant atmosphere. The models would be typically viewed under such light conditions, so the light colour would be appropriate for that reason too and colour changes become unimportant.

Thanks, I am sure Valeriy won't mind the short digression. Once you are far enough in the planning, many of us wouldn't mind another building log, I think !

For our German association we will in all likelyhood also have to cancel the AGM in late September this year. Even when most of our members are also above 60 years of age and should have received their second shot by the end of summer, a vaccination only means that you are most likely not to develop severe sysmptoms, but you can still catch the virus. So we should all avoid gatherings until 2022. A hobby is not worth the risk.

Funny that you should mention this. One has too many tools and then forgets about them - particularly, when one is set on a particular process. When writing the text above, it occured to me that I just didn't think of the very fine watchmaking cutting and smoothing broaches I have. I have to try this on some leftover laser-cut blocks. However, it does not resolve the problem with the sanding. Perhaps one should soak the paper in CA, rather than lacquer - but I hate CA ...

Block-Making 1 The 1/160 scale from certain perspectives is rather inconvenient actually: too big to fake things and too small to do them properly due to practical limitations of tool sizes and materials dimensions. Blocks at this scale would probably come in the range between 0.8 mm and 2 mm length. The latter would be a hefty 32 cm (or 13”) in real size, at least for smaller ships. When I started dabbling with photo-etching in around 2007, I had the idea to fashion blocks from surface etched parts folded up and soldered together. As the need for blocks only arose now, I had never tried out the idea. Since then I got the laser-cutter and thought I might give the same principle a try, laminating the blocks from laser-cut pieces of paper. I am aware that larger blocks, build up from laser-cut wood pieces, are commercially available now. My preoccupation was to produce blocks of the correct outside shape and through which the rope passes prototype fashion, i.e. to avoid the brick-like thingies from which the ropes sticks out vertically and then goes down with a sharp kink, as seen all too often on models. ********************* Warning, the following text describes some dead ends without success - As aligning the tiny parts correctly would be the main challenge, I drew the pieces at their correct relative location into small frets of several blocks that would be laminated onto each other. Once the lacquer was dry, the blocks could be separated. As I needed various double-blocks for the boat-davits and the anchor-cranes, I started out immediately with that challenge, thinking that, once mastered, single blocks would be comparatively easy to make. In fact, due to the thicknes of the Canson-paper, I needed seven layers, one for the outer shell on each side, one in the middle separating the sheaves, and the sheaves made up from two layers each. While the lamination as such worked well, aligning the seven frets precisely enough did not work too well. It also proved impossible to sand the tiny paper blocks to shape and smooth enough. The main problem, however, was that somehow the hole for passing through the rope always got clogged up. Opening it up with a drill then invariably let to the distruction of the block. After a dozen of tries with different variants of the laser-cut parts to facilitate alignment etc. I finally gave up that idea. Next came several experiments with the classical methods of carving blocks from billets, but using styrene or acrylic glass, rather than wood. While both materials are easy to drill, they proved too soft for shaping the grooves etc. cleanly, particularly the styrene. Attempts to cut slots for the sheaves, then to glue on a bottom piece to close the slots, and to later insert turned sheaves failed also. It was impossible to keep the 0.2 mm wide and 0.8 mm high slots clean enough from glue and cleaning them out afterwards at this dimension is hardly possible. Using brass and soldering equally failed to produce the desired result. ************************** Now comes the success story - In the end I resorted to my trusted bakelite. This material is hard and does not smear, but is much more brittle than the other materials. Drilling 0.2 mm holes is still quite easy and doesn’t strain the drills too much. Drilling 0.2 mm holes into bakelite strips I cut strips of the required width from a 1 mm sheet of bakelite to start with. The micro-mill then was used as a jig-borer and a row of holes drilled for a batch of blocks. Using a broken 0.2 mm drill, ground flat at the end, was then used as an end-mill to cut the grooves that simulate the slots for the sheaves. Milling 0.2 mm slots into bakelite strips A stereo-microscope helps to safely perform the machinining with 0.2 mm tooling The profile of the blocks was roughly milled to shape using various cone-shaped burrs. The final shaping was done by first hand-filing with a diamond nail-file and then using a fine abrasive wheel in the hand-held drill. Row of double-blocks ready to be separated To separate the blocks, the strip was taken into a collet of the dividing head and the blocks were sliced off with a circular saw. To prevent them from disappearing into any black holes of the workshop, the strip was backed with some adhesive tape. The sides of the block-shells were smoothed and shaped with the blocks clamped in a kind of special hand-held vice. This vice has brass insert jaws that are curved and stepped so as to clamp the block securely while working on it with an abrasive wheel. A collection of blocks and the special pin-vice to hold them A collection of blocks and 1 Euro-Cent coin for comparison Two sizes of blocks of 2 mm and 1.6 mm length respectively The blocks now have to be finished off with their external metal straps and hooks – another fiddly challenge ahead. To be continued ....

Which Brazilian gunboat will that be ?

Thank you very much for the kind words ! Regularity in the spacing of the steps was indeed one motivation for re-doing the stairs with the laser-cutter. Although milling the slots into the bakelite-paper can be done quite accurately, somewhow the assembly did not turn out as regular as I wished.

The term 'life-time warranty' always gets me - whose life and how long ?

One should not overemphasise this. Wood dust in general, when inhaled is not so good for your lungs and some people can develop allergic sensitivities, when exposed more frequently to the dust of certain wood species. So you won't fall over dead, when working with ebony. Good ventilation and a mask when working with it should solve most of the problems. Personally, I never worked with ebony, but heard from colleagues - and can quite imagine this due to its hardness, that ebony is very difficult to bend and prone to splitting. In fact, it seems to be mainly used for carving, inlay work and the likes. I would not use it for structural parts. In fact, there seems to various tree species originating in different parts of Africa and Southern Asia the wood of which goes by the name of 'ebony'. So there may be a certain variability in its workability.

I would agree with Ron and wonder, why there was no top-silde in the first place. I have seen such combination machines by different makers/vendors and they normally have one. You would need it for short taper turning and finer work. Having said that, I would consider saving up for a small lathe, such as the smallest PROXXON for instance, for really small work, rather than buying a top-slide, which is probably a third or a quarter of the cost of the PROXXON. It may be worthwhile to scan the secondhand market too.

On navy boat the thwarts were kept clean, neither tarred nor painted. I think I have seen that in other boats too. Depends a bit on how the boats were stored, i.e. how exposed they are to weathering. I could imagine that the thwarts were taken out and stored in a shed.