Bob Legge

There is a plan in the NMM.
 
Belle Poule fl.1780 (French, captured) ZAZ3117 J6627
 
An image can be seen here:
https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/82908.html

Sister Ships DÉDAIGNEUSE 1776, AMPHITRITE 1768, TOURTERELLE 1770


 
Also:
Catalogue des Plans - Les Archives de la Marine


 
2030 Page 176 Frégate << La Belle Poule >>. << Construite à Bordeaux en 17.. par M GUIGNACE. L'Enphitrite & La Tourterelle ont pareillement été faites à Baux par le même ingénier .. Non signé ni daté [vers 1764].

Tracé des formes de la coque : pl. vertical. Encre noire. Dim. 0.53 x 0.40.

2G4.3, no 65


Regards,
 
Bob.
 

There is a plan in the NMM.
 
Belle Poule fl.1780 (French, captured) ZAZ3117 J6627
 
An image can be seen here:
https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/82908.html

Sister Ships DÉDAIGNEUSE 1776, AMPHITRITE 1768, TOURTERELLE 1770


 
Also:
Catalogue des Plans - Les Archives de la Marine


 
2030 Page 176 Frégate << La Belle Poule >>. << Construite à Bordeaux en 17.. par M GUIGNACE. L'Enphitrite & La Tourterelle ont pareillement été faites à Baux par le même ingénier .. Non signé ni daté [vers 1764].

Tracé des formes de la coque : pl. vertical. Encre noire. Dim. 0.53 x 0.40.

2G4.3, no 65


Regards,
 
Bob.
 

Hi, and tanks☺️
 
 

Egyptian Oars and Vessel:
Jenkins, Nancy, The Boat Beneath The pyramid (King Cheops' Royal Ship), 1980, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, ISBN 0-03-057061-1
The reconstruction of a dismantled complete vessel which was found in a large covered stone pit at the base of the great Pyramid in 1954.
Length 43.4 metres, beam 5.9 metres, depth (aft of midships) 1.78 metres, draught 1.48 metres.
Bob

A hint on serving:
 
"Worm and parcel with the lay,
Turn and serve the other way."
 
From Longridge page 209 - SERVING AND WORMING.
 
Bob.

Egyptian Oars and Vessel:
Jenkins, Nancy, The Boat Beneath The pyramid (King Cheops' Royal Ship), 1980, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, ISBN 0-03-057061-1
The reconstruction of a dismantled complete vessel which was found in a large covered stone pit at the base of the great Pyramid in 1954.
Length 43.4 metres, beam 5.9 metres, depth (aft of midships) 1.78 metres, draught 1.48 metres.
Bob

Egyptian Oars and Vessel:
Jenkins, Nancy, The Boat Beneath The pyramid (King Cheops' Royal Ship), 1980, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, ISBN 0-03-057061-1
The reconstruction of a dismantled complete vessel which was found in a large covered stone pit at the base of the great Pyramid in 1954.
Length 43.4 metres, beam 5.9 metres, depth (aft of midships) 1.78 metres, draught 1.48 metres.
Bob

Young America - extreme clipper 1853
Part 316 – Rigging Continued
 
It has been more than a month since the last post, but work has been progressing.  Most of it is not too photo-worthy, however.  How many pictures of ratlines would be of interest?  The last picture in the last post showed the upper yards for the main and mizzen masts with their ironwork completed.  In the first picture below, some of these are shown with footropes added. 
 

 
The two on the left are the main royal and skysail yards.  The three on the right are the mizzen lower topsail, topgallant and royal.  The mizzen upper topsail seems to be AWOL someplace.  I have still not made the broken mizzen sky yard.   In the next picture the mizzen lower topsail is having a test fit on the mast.
 
 
In this picture the pivot arm of the mizzen lower yard truss has just been replaced – note the bright copper retaining ring - after the pin through the yoke broke while I was rattling the topmast shrouds.  The broken copper wire pin was replaced with stronger brass.  This was some tricky work to do in place. 
 
Not shown above is the main topgallant yard, which has now been erected and shown in the next picture.
 
 
The royal sheets that pass through the iron sheet block under the center of this have been run and belayed below.  The topgallant clew lines have been coupled to the sheet chains and also belayed.  These four lines serve to pull the yard downward.  However, I notice in this picture that those lines have relaxed tension on the port upper topsail standing lift, so some adjustment will be needed to straighten that out.  This is a normal part of the rigging process and is time consuming.
 
The last two pictures illustrate the problem of humidity changes discussed in some earlier posts.  The first picture shows the port main sail bowline as it has gone slack since the weather has turned cold – causing a drop in humidity.
 
 
These were installed in the early, warmer, more humid fall.  The next picture, without moving the camera, was taken less than one minute after wetting the line with clear water. 
 
 
The slack is completely gone.  The 3" line is long staple, crochet cotton, size 40.  It will sag again when dry.  This occurs mainly on long lines, cotton and linen.  I am testing treating the lines with some dilute polymer emulsion, either PVA or acrylic, to provide some moisture resistance and minimize this effect.  Stay tuned.
 
 
Ed

Superb joinery, as usual!

Good morning and happy new year.

There is always hope Sailor1234567890, the latest is that she will be home in March 2019 - If you wish to help save the old lady monetarily or otherwise, drop a line to < savefallsofclyde@gmail.com > they will be pleased to hear from you - Remember she will be 140 years old on the 12th of December -too good to lose at this late hour, she must be saved and brought back to her birth place in Glasgow and not sunk as a divers wreck off Honolulu.
For those interested in my third and final model of her, I have here included a shot of progress todate - this is now being covered as the ‘Current Project’ on my web site, and may be covered here in further detail, if requested after this one finishes - it shows her as originally built from the scant details still with us.

Fig-145 The Bilge Pumps shown here are those of the Star of India, and are typical of all that I have ever seen and photographed, note that the elongated shape of the two pumps is fore and aft, which again is typical of those fitted to the Windjammers of the late 1800s.  Note also that there are just two pistons or rather pumps on a single crankshaft and that probably forged in the blacksmiths shop.  If so made, it would have been very difficult to forge it to take 4 pumps in the restrictive space between the Fife Rails and between the mast and the deck house that is the usual location of the Bilge Pumps.  In later times, the pumps were made as double acting, but at this date I do not think that it was so.
 
The Falls of Clyde was the first of the Falls Line fleet of iron four masted ships and barques built on the Clyde, and this just three years after the very first of the new breed, this being the County of Peebles, so we are in a period of innovation , a new concept of ship design to compete with the ever advancing Steam Ship. So we can expect the pumps to be of advanced design, and indeed they were.  Now began the search, luckily the original costs book for Hull-17 (Falls of Clyde) is still with us, and this lists the Bilge Pumps as manufactured and supplied by R.C. Wallace & Co with an address as Glasgow.  Further research in the Post-Office Annual Glasgow Directory for 1878/79 identified the company with an actual address, yet further research revealed two more companies associated with the pumps R.C.Wallace & Sons, and Wallace and Crawford, in fact the Wallace and the Crawford families were closely involved with each other way back in history, and that his initials R. C. stands for Robert Crawford Wallace. 

Fig-146  In 1869 Wallace & Crawford were issued with Patent 2763 for the invention of “improvements is pumps and mechanism ……….”, further research turned up a copy of the original drawings part of which is shown here.  Basically this consisted of four pumps side by side, and operated by cams in place of a crankshaft.  One needs to understand the problems associated with pumps in general.  What in a petrol engine is the piston, in the pump is a cup with a valve in the centre and has to remain vertical in the cylinder in it’s movement.  In a piston engine with a crank shaft, there is a pivot in the piston so that the connecting rod can move side to side as the crank shafts turns.  This is not possible in a pump as the valve takes the place of the pivot pin in the piston, and several ways were devised in the pumps of the period to maintain the vertical moment of the cup, while allowing the connecting rod to pivot according to the crankshaft. It would appear that there were two aims with the new pump design, the first was to have four pumps in the same space as the two, and find a better way of maintaining the vertical movement of the cup and valve.
In the main draft we have a series of pivoted arms and small cams to lift the cup and valve, but on close examination, they would only work to lift the cup, and I cannot see how it could force the cup back down.

Fig-147  However this draft was also included, almost as an afterthought, as this was the only view shown, while there were three views shown of the extended arm arrangement.  The original notes with the draft does not appear to have survived so it was a case of working things out for ones self and why the inverted heart shape?

Fig-148 After some experimentation with the cardboard cut out and drawing pins as pivot points, I eventually got the gist of what it was all about, and actually made a card board model of the mechanism that would move the connecting rod vertically up and down, with no sideways movement at all.  The next question was how to make it in metal, as this was precision engineering to a very high order, in fact so high that I needed a CNC machine to solve the problems - which begs the question how did they make this in 1878 - I still do not have the answer to that one.  Perhaps when we see the complete mechanism working, some one will come up with an answer to that one as well.

January 2019
Wishing you all a happy, healthy & wealthy 2019, may it exceed your wildest dreams.
------------
Fig-149 - In the original drafts for the pump, large cross arms are shown at the top, and also atop the inverted heart shape cam.  Checking out the draft for a scale, it became obvious that it was in fact not drawn to scale, however the arms if incorporated would not fit the space available for the Bilge Pumps on any scale.  It soon became clear that with the heart shaped cam, the top arm was superfluous and not needed at all, but how come that shape for the cam.  With a CAD package and my trusty Mac, it did not take long to discover the secret, just by plotting the movement of the parts, when rotated at different points, and there it was the heart shaped cam.  I became so fascinated with it, that I decided there and then to make two models of the pump - one at 96th scale for the Falls of Clyde model and one at 1/4” to the foot, as a working mechanism - not I might say as a working pump, but just to show/see how the cams worked in practice.

Fig-150 - I photocopied the drafts and printed them to a reasonable scale size, using the hight of the Fife Rail as the most logical starting point.  This would determine the diameter of the fly wheel, and the hight of the main drive shaft.  This in turn would determine the space between that and the deck, to be divided between the hight of the pump case and the maximum size of the cam.  The size of the cam would then determine the maximum possible movement of the pump piston/cup. With these now determined a few sketches were made with dimensions and diameters noted and the parts turned up for the two pumps. Here can be seen the basic parts directly from the lathe.

Fig-151 - Here are shown most of the parts with the second stage machining, the milling of the flats, and the pump parts are now starting to take form.

Fig-152 - It soon became apparent that with cams of this size that even with my ingenuity I could see no way of making them as accurately as would be required to actually work - Step forward good friend Jeff and his CNC milling machine.  I showed him how I had plotted the shape of the cam, and he soon had this in 3 dimensions in his computer program for the machine to follow - and follow it did to produce a working set of cams in no time at all, such is modern technology - how they would have loved this in in 1878  
 
It is interesting to note that the working dimensions allow for no inaccuracies whatsoever in the shape of the cam - if it is right it will work - if not, it will not work.  Now how they produced such a part in 1878 in quantity - four per pump is still a mystery to me, particularly as it would not have been cast or stamped in iron or steel, because of the sea water corrosion.  Working inside the cam would need to be two free running rollers, any interference to these such as corrosion would  have made the pump inoperable.  My only surmise would be that a master pattern for the cam was hand made in iron and used as a hot stamp in something like bronze to form the cams.  But the Victorian engineers were masters at overcoming supposedly insurmountable problems, this being just one of them.

Hi Gerald, a happy New Year to you and your family.
Thanks for the pointer to your website.  As has been commented but much more experienced modellers, I also find your work inspirational.  Whenever I run into a metalsmithing 'roadblock' I always return to your work and see what is achievable - that usually gets me motivated, not that I am anywhere near your skill level.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Ciao e grazie a tutti, altre foto.
Hello and thanks to everyone, more photos.
 

 

 

 

 

 
Un Saluto

Sailing off the bench.......
 
I'll need to focus on building my wife a hair washing station for her in house salon....so I'll be at that for a bit.
Happy new year everyone......
 
Rob

Here are some pix of the stepped mast from several angles.
 
Got to let it dry for a couple of hours before I begin to focus on deciphering the many lines and getting the correct ones belayed on the spider band. 
 
I'm enjoying the speed of the build at this point...I truly think this technique of nearly finishing each mast before stepping....makes the completion look as if it's not years off.......
 
Rob

Hello,

as mentioned earlier, polyester is not an option for the ropes of my French corvette.
That's why I kept coming up with information about the durability of silk on the internet, partly from scientific papers by conservators of museums.
Ultimately, I can conclude for me that no specific time can be made to the durability of silk, it depends on many factors (environment, location, light conditions, processing, etc.).
In any case, the silk rigging will outlive my existence for a long time.
The difference between ropes made of linen and silk ropes is clearly visible in the next two pictures.
The ropes made of silk therefore look smoother and cleaner. The rope made of linen is a little rough.


If I make the ropes of silk, I can choose between 180 colors, for example at Gütermann. The right brown for the standing good will already be there.