druxey

Nice looking deck: well done, Fam!

Or in my case, tripping over the dog and falling into the model.

This week, I decided to push ahead and make some more progress. There are so many tiny pieces to cut out!
 
I decided to work on the windlass as that seemed like a good project goal. I got a little ways along and a tiny piece of paper with a bunch of parts on it went missing. I searched high and low, swearing I had just seen it hours before. Next morning, I see it on the armrest of my chair. I must have leaned on it and it stuck to my elbow and got deposited on the chair! I've never had that kind of problem with wooden ship model kit parts. 
 
Well, pressing ahead with my report here. I finished the main part of the windlass barrel, which consisted of approximately 31 parts... A 1/96-scale windlass barrel with 31 parts! Am I crazy? Well... maybe. It was a daunting task, but it actually went by fairly quickly and it IS pretty cool that I only needed scissors and knife and some glue...
 
 
Here's part of the barrel under construction and some other parts too. Sorry about the short depth of field on the macro focus.

 
When you build something, you gotta try it for size on the model immediately. It's a rule. The barrel came out just a tad long, which wouldn't be a problem except that the deck has thin black outlines where the bitts are expected to fit in place. These will show, but the lines won't be very noticeable when it's all done.

 
 
Here's a closeup of the completed windlass barrel assembly before cleaning it up.

 
 
And one of the same assembly after some touch-up painting. Again, I'm using the paints sold by Shipyard, which is fairly opaque, so I could paint it on without losing the black printed details.

 
 
Here's another view of the skylight, gratings and hatch I made last time. I went back and added a piece of fine gauge wire for the handle on the sliding hatch.

 
 
I was on a roll, so why stop? I'd cut mast hoops from brass tubing on my last model and thought about doing the same for the Alert. In the end, I decided to make my own mast hoops from a piece of a brown paper bag. I did this for another model years ago and it worked out great. So, I thought I'd refresh the skill.
 
I used a piece of brass tubing slightly larger than the diameter of the mast and wrapped the paper around it, applying white glue to it throughout the process. Once dry, I used a razor blade to cut thin rings off. It's been a long time since I've done this, and it took many tries to get even, thin slices. But, I managed to get enough for my purposes.

 
 
So, what did I learn in paper ship modeling school this week? There are a lot of frickin' little frickin' tiny little frickin' pieces that have be cut. The hardest part is really looking at the work ahead. Yeah, it's like ship modeling that way. But, once you start, all you have to do is cut, cut, cut and cut and cut and then glue. As long as you keep your head down and don't stop to count how many more pieces you need to cut, projects finish up pretty quickly.
 
Clare

Tony, that's exactly it. You almost have to build with your eyes closed so you can't see what's coming at you next 
 
I'm on a roll at the moment it seems. I decided to make a simple sliding type hatch cover for the wardroom companionway. At 1/96 it doesn't have to be that sophisticated. Needed planking, so I printed out 0.25pt lines 1/16" apart. I'm using Adobe Illustrator for a number of other tasks, so it was easy enough to fire it up and make the pattern. I'll probably add some kind of handle, either bent wire or a simple block type handle from paper. The completed piece was painted and set into place.
 
I also found an old screen in the garage. It turns out that the mesh is the exact size I need for the mullion pattern for the companion way over the captain's cabin. I pulled out a bottle of canopy glue, which I bought for another project, but didn't like the way it worked. For this one and the small glass panes, it worked great – Just squeezed a little out to fill in all the holes in the piece of screen material. Once dried it looked perfect, so I cut down to the exact size I needed and dropped it into place.
 
Lastly, I cleaned up the deck pumps after adding the "iron bands". I decided to give them natural wood looking handles instead of leaving them their printed color, which was red.
 
 
The skylight for the captain's cabin ready to trim and install.

 
 
Everything in place. The deck pumps were quite a challenge and I'm REALLY glad they're done. I will be burning incense and making offerings to the god of thin CA glue tonight. Also visible is the installed skylight and sliding hatch cover forward of that.

 
 
Small accomplishment here was adding the stern timberheads. You probably can't see it so well in the photo, but the rudder is also mounted.

 
 
So, what's next? Good question. I have no idea. Time to look at the kit drawings and get intimidated back into seclusion... But, I'm thinking about cannon barrels (make them from paper or buy or turn them?), deadeyes and chainplates, the taffrail at the stern, and the windlass assembly.
 
Oh, and I noticed that the AOTS book shows two ships boats: A 16' longboat and an 18' cutter. Don't know where these would go, but I also found that the HMS Mercury parts I'm using includes a boat that's just about 16' long. I'll look at the details of that and see if it might be useable. Not knowing where to put it, I would probably mount it as in tow behind the ship. That is, IF I decide to try building it – It seems like a whole project by itself.
 
Clare

April 29th, 2015
 
Hi all
A new small update from my shipyard of “Le Brick de 24”: I’ve finally completed the deck planking!
The last lateral planks were really hard to set, because I had no more room to set wedges or to force them in position with any tool other than fingers ... aching fingers in the end!!
Anyway, it’s done and I really like the way it come out.
 
Here is a general bird-view... I’ve already started sanding the port side but the planking will be more visible only after application of a coat of sanding sealer.
 

 
A shot of the forecastle area ...
 

 
... and another of the quarterdeck area...
 

 
Now the planks curvature is evident, mainly at the bow. The forward-most and rearmost planks of the most external strakes have been spiled, because that amount of curvature was too difficult... well, to me, because I didn’t dare to try the extreme bending techniques shown by some other master shipwrights here in MSW  
 
Now the next jobs are:
scraping/sanding the planks even tree-nailing the entire deck (already started yesterday to mark the holes locations) drilling the water scuppers in the waterways, only drilling the in-out pilot hole and finishing the scupper inner portion drilling the hawse holes, only finishing their inner portion applying a coat of sanding sealer to the deck planks I think this will take a couple of weeks, after which I can switch to the hull exterior to install the keel, the stem and the rudder post.
 
Best regards
Fam

Glad to be of help Tony .
 
Topsail Yard Lifts
 
As with the lower yard lifts these are used to square the yard. They attach a little differently to the lower ones.
 

 
A Span fitted with a thimble at each end is clove-hitched around the topmast cap :
 

 
The thimbles at the ends of the span are lashed to thimbles in the standing ends of the lifts :
 

 
Then the lifts go through the lift blocks on the ends of the yard, up through the lower sheaves of the sister blocks lashed to the shrouds, and belay to the aftmost cleats on the lower part of the shrouds :
 

 

 

 
 Danny

With due respect to the model sailmakers out there: any stitching at scales under about 1:6 looks way over-size, as Wefalck has said.

Joel you are of course correct, perhaps a bad example.  Mark, in air craft building you only get to re-tweak and fly again if you survived the first flight.

While she did indeed capsize and fill through the ports, Mary Rose was some 25 years old at her sinking, so not that totally unsuccessful of a design.  Just to keep the record straight.

Mathew Bakers famous sail plan for a galleon of 1596 seems to show where he wanted her to float. The earliest named plan in the NMM the Tryumph of 1698 has a load line indicated

Wayne
 
This topic is intriguing.  This is a quick reply this morning, only after about 20 minutes of research.  I am leaning toward the replies that the shipwrights and builder's relied on tried and true methods and experiences to build the hull, and then when it was afloat could then actually determine the load water line and best sailing trim.  The shipwrights and naval architects might have had a good idea where it was supposed to be, but for the times there were to many factors that influenced the final product that few would want to commit themselves officially on paper to be so easily judged for a failure.  It is very high math to calculate and perhaps there were to many variables in materials,(wood)(availability), methods, and skills at building wood ships to determine for sure.  The advancement in Ship design was very slow and conservative. 
 
I am drawn to my conclusion by the review of several known successes and known failures.  Failures include Wasa, Mary Rose, and the US ship of the line Independence and William Doughtys design of his mid size revenue cutter plan of 1815/16. (Dallas) This little cutter was off.  It had great difficulty carrying its ballast and supplies for 30 days.   When all was on board it was found that that with a 10 draft, less than 2 feet of free board remained.  The plan in the archives does not have the water line marked.(unless I missed it)
 
Successes include Constitution and Essex.  Hacket's plan of Essex is available.  Maybe I have missed it but I can not find where he marked the Load Water line on the plan.   I did not have time to locate or  carefully examine Humphry's or Fox's Plans of the first US frigates, but I bet if you look at the DESIGN plans the LWL may not be on them(This could be my failure to understand all those lines, please let me know if it is).  Make sure you are not looking at as built plans after the ship was afloat.  Chapelle in his reconstructed plans seems to have added the LWL and Best Sailing Trim.  I am curious how he knew as he only had the archives available, not the ship(Constitution an obvious exception,but I do not know if he visited the ship for his reconstructions).  Did Chapelle calculate the LWL more than a hundred years after the fact?
 
When did LWL's actually appear routinely on design plans?
 
Hope this helps.
 
Phil

It has always seemed to me that they made a best guess based on experience during the design phase then, when a ship was determined to be ineffective a fix was made.  Vasa was the extreme where it was not possible to bring her back for the fix based on sea trials.  The problem persisted up into at least the mid-1700s, ships being lost at the battle of Quiberon Bay (1759?) because of hauling up their lower port lids.
Supposedly a yacht for Queen Victoria was so altered while being constructed that she capsized still in the dock.  If a courtier suggested the Queen might want to listen to a fiddler playing chanties atop a capstan, a capstan was added.  Finally so much was added that stability was lost.
I suspect they had to wait for calculus to be invented before they had any sort of chance to work it out on paper beforehand.

All of the old methods produced rough approximations. Some were rougher than others. Shipbuilding was an art not a science until the middle of the eighteenth century.The ships were built to displace something more than the actual weight of their intended contents and could then be ballasted down the design load water line for stability. If you want a snapshot of just how well this worked in the real world, consult "Great ships" by Frank Fox. See how many of the ships, particularly the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd rates required girdling or padding the frames to increase the displacement. So many ships could hardly open the lower tier ports when they were at anchor much less at sea.
 
This subject interests me and I would love a chance to read the paper when you are done

Ah, type yclept Gothic blackletter. Haue fun!

Ah, type yclept Gothic blackletter. Haue fun!

Not sure, why everyone wants stitched sails. The stitching and the thread used are grossly out of scale unless you work in say 1:24 or bigger.
 
However, glueing the panels together is an option. Not sure the glue on the tape would be strong enough for the narrow seams in the sails. It is meant for full-surface re-enforcement in picture-mounting and book-binding.

Here is an interesting item concerning the works by David Steel from Mariner's Mirror:
 
Decencière, P., 2009: Correspondence: Bourdé de Villehuet and Steel. The Mariner’s Mirror, 95, 221–223, doi:10.1080/00253359.2009.10657100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.2009.10657100(Accessed April 29, 2015).
 
In his note on ‘Hauling out the mizzen’, (Mariner’s Mirror 94 (2008), 321) John Harland expresses his surprise to find Steel describing at such a late date as 1795 a practice the author considers to have been ‘obsolete well before 1800’.
 
This point can easily been answered: Steel was not the actual author of his Seamanship in Theory and Practice, as this book is a mere compilation that had already been edited as the second part of his earlier Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship (1794). In the foreword to this second part, Steel clearly acknowledges that he had freely used Bourdé’s Le Manoeuvrier: ‘To have passed over a work of such character would have been highly blame able’, (p 243). In fact, Steel took no chance to be blamed, as most of the ‘seamanship’ part of his book (if not all) comes from the French author, rearranged under a different order.
 
The quotations of Steel gathered by John Harland are mere word-for-word translations of what can found on pages 85, 87, 88 and 89 of Le Manoeuvrier. This explains why the same statements are to be found in Steel’s Seamanship in Theory and Practice, and later, in Seamanship published in 1824 in New York by Blunt, who cribbed Steel in his turn.
 
Bourdé’s Le Manoeuvrier is available at: Villehuet, J. B. de, 1769: Le manoeuvrier. 468 pp. https://books.google.com/books?id=C_mSSuhA7uwC.  
A link to the 1813 Blunt (have not located the 1824 version referenced above) may be found at
Blunt, E. M., 1813: Seamanship, both in theory and practice: to which is annexed, an essay on naval tactics and signals : also, regulations for the government of the Navy of the United States of America ... : including also, forms of general and particular orders for the better government and discipline of armed ships ... : with a system of naval discipline, and the acts concerning letters of marque, reprisals, their officers and men : with a cartel for usage and exchange of prisoners ... E.M. Blunt, 310 pp. https://books.google.com/books?id=cPpOAAAAYAAJ.  
Steel's "Seamanship" is available here (oops - pasted the wrong citation originally!):
Steel, D., 1795: Seamanship, Both in Theory and Practice. Printed and published for, and at, Steel’s Navigation-Warehouse, Tower-Hill, 246 pp. docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/rarebooks_1600-1800/VK541S81795.PDF.

I'm not that familiar with the physics involved, Hellmut, but the frictional forces in a sheave will surely vary. The factors to be considered are:
 
1) friction between the sheave and its pin
2) the angle at which the line enters and leaves the sheave (i.e. how much contact surface there is between them)
3) the diameter of the line and the groove in the sheave (surface area of contact)
4) the coefficient of friction between the two elements
5) diameter of the sheave
 
There maybe other factors that I've overlooked. Of course, multiple sheaves will complicate things even more.... Perhaps this can all be reduced to a vector diagram.
 
Mit grusse

I will respond once I have had a progress!

Thanks for the comments once again George, Robin, Mark, Greg, David, Russell, Maury, H, Jihn, Mark and Carl .
 
Robin, I don't have any more pics other than what I have in this build log - sorry.
 
Topsail Yard Tyes
 
Before going into the construction of the Topsail Yard Tyes a warning to others building from TFFM - there is an error in their rigging, pointed out to me by none other than the author David Antscherl. Unfortunately this error was pointed out just as I had completed them . No biggie, I just pulled the whole lot apart and re-did them. At least this gave me an extra couple of days working on the model .
 
TFFM has you rigging the topsail tyes in similar fashion to the lower yards, whereas they use a DOUBLE block on the yard. The standing end of the Tye, one each side, circles the topmast and lashes back to itself via an eye. It then goes through one of the sheaves in the double block on the yard, up to the tye block under the top, and down to a double block for the tackle. The other side does the same.
 
The tye block has two buntline blocks lashed to it's top :
 

 

 
An overall view of the tye rigging :
 

 

 
The blocks under the top :
 

 
The double blocks on the ends of the tye falls :
 

 
The lower end of the tackle has a single block on a pendant which hooks into a ringbolt in the channels on either side. The fall of the tackle belays to a convenient timberhead. This is the main topsail tackle :
 

 

 
And the fore one :
 

 
 Danny

Thank you all, I really appreciate your support.
I must admit though I am not at all confident that the boat will end up looking as good as it deserves.
 
With a baby now in the house work progresses slowly. The sheer plank rivets are now left and of course all rivets forward of station 0 at the bow.
 

 
This plank was left unpainted by the american team and I am tempted to do the same. There will also be a rub rail added which will hide the uppermost rivet line. In the next picture also note the shaping of the stem which at the level of the sheer plank is left square.
 

 
I needed a brake so I concentrated on the false stem. It was first shaped with the needle files and then glued to the hull. Hopefully there is some similarity with the previous picture.
 

 

 

 
With this done its back to riveting. I am concerned that the CA glue will stain the wood and although this is not a problem for the lower planks, if the sheer plank is left unpainted it will need a lot of sanding which with all the rivets will be ddifficult. I am also concerned that there will be a lot of stains on the inside of the hull but there is no better alternative to superglue. So here it goes.
First I covered the plank and then marked the width of the rub rail to make sure all upper rivets will be hidden
 

 

 
And drill and glue and drill and glue and drill and glue...
 

 
Drilling 200 holes in a row is very satisfying
 

 
And another brake was necessary, so I finished cutting the centerboard slot
 

 
And finally all rivets done! There are a few left at the bow but the cant frames need to go in first. The sheer planks are sanded with 180 grit but the glue stains are still somewhat visible.
 

 

 
And finally, the long awaited moment has come. The boat needs to be taken off the jig, turned around for the cant frames to be installed and then positioned back to the jig for the rest of the rivets to go in and then fairing, priming and painting.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Picking up the boat I was surprised, the hull is very light but extremely rigid. Next the cant frames went in which took a bit of head scratching but I am happy with the result.
 

 

 

 
Lots left to be done but making progress at last!

If you are referring to the Vancouver expedition, Discovery was as depicted here (From the RMG collection). She was similar to a naval sixth rate, but with a merchant ship body. (The cross-section would have been fuller and the bow much bluffer.) If you aren't too fussy, I suppose a kit of Fly, a Swan class ship might be adapted to resemble her.
 
(For those interested, the drawing shows ventilation scuttles on the lower deck: a detail usually omitted from official draughts.)

If you are referring to the Vancouver expedition, Discovery was as depicted here (From the RMG collection). She was similar to a naval sixth rate, but with a merchant ship body. (The cross-section would have been fuller and the bow much bluffer.) If you aren't too fussy, I suppose a kit of Fly, a Swan class ship might be adapted to resemble her.
 
(For those interested, the drawing shows ventilation scuttles on the lower deck: a detail usually omitted from official draughts.)

Tim
 
Probably the best thing to do is take samples to the nearest woodworking store like Woodcraft and have them look at it.  Tough to tell with pictures
 
Jim

Which one of each?  Wikipedia (a good starting place if Google is obscure with it's returns) lists 12 HMS Discovery's and 15 HMS Chatham's.