vacotton

Yes, I must say that I was inspired by Evan and his passion for this ship. And over on Finescale Modeler there is jtilly who has lit my historical fire with the detail of his analysis. I admire the courage displayed by those who served in our fledgling navy in the early years. Life aboard a late 18th century warship couldn't have been a vacation cruise and I am sure that the average sailor aboard Constitution was not there because he wanted to be. Life was tough for both seamen and officers alike. How many admirals today would consent to sleep in a hammock? So, Mike, these thoughts roam through my mind as I work on this treasure. I have just started the port side with a lot of experience gained from my initial struggles with the starboard half. Already I can see that building this ship is a little like spinning several plates. I appreciate you looking in as I move forward. All I can hope for are fair winds and following seas. Verne

Okay. Starboard knees are installed. Now that I went through that exercise, I wonder if it was all worth it. After all, except for those under the viewports, most of those knees are not visible unless you squint through the port gun ports. Oh well, look at the practice I got shaping styrene sheet into those knees from white ash tree roots. These knees are cut as close to scale as possible. Please consult the dimensions in the above drawing. Well hopefully the port side will go smoother now that I went through all of that agony learning the ropes of working styrene with all of the accompanying blunders and frustration. I think the next step now is to visit the commodore's head (in a manner of speaking, that is) contained within the starboard gallery and build a floor and a seat. Hole optional. I will need to take the virtual tour again. http://www.history.navy.mil/USSCTour/movie.html Here some good material: It seems that Revell made the gallery windows differently than the windows on the actual ship. Revell: Four 1 x 3's while the actual windows are Three 2 x 3's. Was this an oversight or have there also been changes in the side gallery windows since 1812? Anyway great fun. Thanks for visiting. Verne

Incredible work on finishing the deck. Very nice color and scribing. Looks very realistic. Regards, vacotton

I like the treatment of your decks, Dan. Going to be studying that as I am about ready to start working my decks. Regards, Verne

Superb craftmanship,Jasseji. Everything fits together so neatly. I aspire to that level of skill. Regards, vacotton

No. I haven't! Yikes. And that brings me to the gun door controversy. Did Constitution have hinged doors in 1812? Without hinged doors, the guys must have had to close the ports up from the inside by hand and maybe lock them in? Then in a combat situation pull the door covers from the ports and stow them below? I hope that the sailor who came up with the hinged half door idea got at at least a NavCom in his file and a promotion. That innovation sure freed up a lot of deck space and probably resulted in better morale. So is that what you meant: the hinged door rigging? If so where do we go from here? Good eye, sir! Verne

I am starting to cut and install knees based upon the drawing that I found. Pleasing aesthetics anyway if there really is no absolute proof that these were present in the 1812 vessel. I roughed out the spar deck so that I have a guide when I work back to the waist so that I will be able to line up the knees properly to the beams. It sure wouldn't do to have a mess where it is visible in the viewport. Here is what I have done so far: I cut the slugs out from .060 sheet styrene and then worked them with a rasp and small handfile until they resemble the above drawing and specs. I quickly found that additional filing had to be done to make each knee conform to the curvature of the bulwark. Please wish me luck as I work back on the starboard hull half. Regards, Verne

Here's a new tidbit of information. The knees were fashioned from the roots of trees. Logical. The roots are incredibly strong and would make excellent load bearing braces. I thought that the naval architects were just being stylish with the swoopy lines of the knees but it appears that the contours were shaped naturally. See the illustration below: Granted that this drawing was done in 1927 but probably hearkens back to a time when there was plenty of white ash. Of course we know that by 1927 there wasn't enough white ash left and so they had to resort to laminates. Either way this drawing probably provides the dimensions of a typical gun deck knee. Here are the scaled dimensions of the illustrated knee at 1:96 Thickness: 6" = . 063" Width from bulwark 10" to 22" (from apex) = .104" to .229" Heigth 5'-6" = .688" Length from bulwark 4'-6" = .563" This will require the use of .060 x .100 styrene strip to come close to the above dimensions Also each of these knees will have to be hand contoured as the slope of the bulwark changes over the run from fore to aft. Since this drawing is too detailed to be read at this resolution please see the pdf: Knees from Trees.pdf Regards, Verne

Nice shot, Dave. I am aware of those massive braces as well. They show up on the Navy's 1927 reconstruction plans. What I am concerned about is the truss construction on the gun deck that may have been present on the 1812 version. The 1927 plans shows vertical bracing which I believe is redundant. It is sad that even by 1927 there was such a shortage of wood that the knees had to be fashion from laminates. That should have been seen as a shot across our ecological bow. Agreed. Short of finding a complete set of plans from 1812, there is no way to know the details of Constitution's original construction. But Hoffman and Lynaugh's paper was still fascinating and provided insights into the problem of hogging and the need for diagonal bracing. The rest were purely my suppositions and conclusions. Now comes the hard part of fashioning clean looking knees with good alignment that will look right. Cheers and thanks again for the help as I learn about this ship. Verne

I found an intriguing white paper published by the Naval Surface Warfare Center during August 1993 entitled "Structural Evaluation of Diagonal Riders for the USS Constitution". In that article Messrs. Roger Hoffman and Kevin Lynaugh discuss the phenomenon of "hogging" whereby over time the hull weakens as the timbers slip laterally until the strength of the keel might be compromised and in extreme cases could cause breakup of a vessel. Diagonal braces are fastened throughout the weight bearing bulwarks to prevent that slippage from happening. Based upon my understanding of this information, I have decided to model the 1812 Constitution with diagonal knees only as it seems that vertical knees might have been redundant and may not have had any preventative effect to counter "hogging". Another possible reason that the original ship may not have had vertical knees installed is that said knees would have taken up valuable deck space and prevented efficient access to the cannon. For those interested: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a271335.pdf Regards, Verne

Images are all 800 x 600 now. Thanks for the heads up. Verne

Gotcha, Dave.

Thanks, Dave. I would like to thank all of you guys for making me feel welcome and providing me with the encouragement that I need as I learn this. Evan, I especially owe you a debt of gratitude for providing me with an approach to get started with. I am sure that before long my own individuality will emerge but for now, I will follow the trail that you have blazed. I would be foolish not to. So today I am working on roughing the spar deck together in order to have a guide for placing the gundeck bulwark knees. This time, I will carefully strive for uniformity of size and shape when crafting the knees for a satisfying overall effect. As soon as I have some results, I will follow up with pictures. Cheers! Verne

Thanks for the words, Dan. I woke this morning with the realization that maybe I had been rushing things a bit. Each part, each phase is a project in and of itself and that is how I must approach things. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, "Haste makes waste." So that said, I plan to do the following: 1. Reapply the .010 strips on the gun deck bulwarks after texturing them following the attached pattern. 2. Build the beams under each spar deck section. 3. CAREFULLY build knees and fit each one in seamlessly before gluing in. Each knee must align with the beam on the overhead spar deck section. 4. Review work and make necessary corrections. Future steps: 1. Build the starboard quarterdeck details including the bench in the window and changing the windows to incorporate the "2x3" windows instead of the "1X3" s that Revell modeled 2. Begin work on the port hull half following all of what was learned on the starboard side. Thanks for following. Verne

Hi folks, Way back in the 70's when I still had brown hair, I built this plastic USS Constitution. As did many of us then, I glued the pieces together and then put the black strings where they belonged and the tan ones where they were supposed to go. Before I could complete this ship, I moved and during transit, that Constitution was destroyed beyond repair. Now retired, I happened to be on Amazon.com and saw my old ship for sale and I couldn't resist and a few days later UPS delivered my kit in a heavy rain storm lovingly protected by a plastic bag. Now it's 2013, I have white but we have the internet. So this time before doing anything else, I Googled the Revell USS Constitution and found Model Ship World. To make a lousy pun, I was sunk after that. Especially after I saw what could be done with a plastic ship kit, some supplies and some know how. MSW is unbelievable! I was amazed with all of the superb craftspeople but was particularly taken with Force9's approach to building the Constitution and because I know nothing at all about shipbuilding I decided to start out by emulating his approach figuring that as I progressed I would make discoveries of my own. I had no idea how right I was. The first thing I found out was that "kitbashing" is not for the faint of heart. I began and started over three times on the first step of lining the hull with styrene stripping to "thicken" the bulwarks until finally I thought things were going well. After looking at Evan's (Force9) pictures of the r/w Constitution, I thought that it would be nice to model the bolts in the buwarks and that's when things started to get dicey. I took my punch to .010 styrene strip and it didn't take long for me to realize that it's not good enough just to punch some bolts in the strip. It has to be punched on in a prescribed manner so that there is pattern after the strips go on or it won't be very believable. So off they came and then I did the job over only this time with a repeating pattern. Back on to the bulwarks they went. Better now. I was feeling pretty good about myself now so I attempted the knees by selecting .08 x 1.0 styrene strip. This works out to about 7" x 10" full scale. The results were an absolute disaster. As I said in another post, they were so crooked that they looked like they needed a good orthodontist, So this morning, I decided to yank them all out and start over again. Pretty ugly stuff now but I know that I can smooth the bulwarks over and start over after I learn a little more about what I am doing. Seeing that I needed a change of pace, I moved over to preparing the spar deck and happily things went went quite well. I don't have that nifty drill press that Evan has so I had to resort to a steady hand and a strong filing arm but here is what I came up with: Also, I have been playing around with the quarterdeck windows. I ran and didn't walk to West Valley Hobbies but alas the K & S PE gratings are gone forever. Mike Sanchez of WVH assures me though that said gratings can be had through Plastruct or another vendor. In the meantime I played around with cutting tiny little 1mmX9mm styrene pieces but didn't find that too satisfying. So here I am folks deciding which direction to take next. Thanks for reading. Verne

Part of this adventure is in the learning. This morning, after a lot of thought, I decided to tear out my first attempt to model the knees between the starboard gun deck and the spar deck and start over. The first iteration was sickening. I tried to approximate the scale of the knees and used .080x 1.00 styrene strips which by my calculation would come out to 7.7" x 9.6" full size. Well, they came out looking very clunky and like they needed a good orthodontist's help. So now I am stripped back down to the base .080 styrene built up wall and ready to start over. Again, I plan to create the bolt pattern on .010 strip and then glue them onto the bulkhead. But this time I want an aesthetically pleasing result instead of the monster that I created last time so again I am reaching out. Thanks for all of your help and remarks. Verne

Hi Dave, Thanks for your help. I do not have access to the pre-1927 plans. If there is a link to them, I really would be interested and if I run across them in my travels I will make them available on this forum. Verne

Hi All, I have been doing some research on the knees on the gundeck and I ran across the navy plans of the ship prior to the 1927 rebuild. It shows vertical joists in place along with the diagonal knees, yet two other folks have modelled the knees without the uprights. Here is a photo from Gene Bodner's work entitled "Constitution in Six Cross-Sections in 1:32 scale". And here is the link: http://modelshipbuilder.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?1405.120 And then here is the pdf of the hull profile encountered by the Navy rebuild team in 1927. 25184-.pdf and the link: http://www.history.navy.mil/USSCTour/frDrawings.html Before I move forward, I would like to get some input from you seasoned salts about this. Thanks and best regards, Verne Cotton (vacotton) 25184-.pdf

Hi Evan, I am taking your lead on my first ever kit-bash: The 1/96 Constitution. I have just finished the grueling task of putting rivets into the spar deck bulwarks and I must say, you were right. Hard on the thumbs. I stripped the .010 styrene off twice before figuring out the right pattern to punch on to the veneer. I finally printed out your photo of the actual Constitution gunwhale and used that as a guide. Won't really know how it turns out until I put a coat of paint on. Going down to West Valley Hobbies now to shop the exact color per that photo. Does anyone know if that wooden bumper was on the spar deck bulwark or was that a recent (last 90 years) addition? If it is appropriate for the 1812 version, I would like to add it in. As soon as my work is presentable for a few photos, I will start a log for you guys. One other question: Do you plan to build a berth and Orlop deck? Verne

As for the knees. I am wondering if it would be feasible to bend them so that they resembled the real ones on the r/w ship. Then join them up to the beams under the spar deck. I have read that styrene when gently heated can be bent.