Bob Cleek

We flew a watersail on a friend's large spidsgatter years ago. I thought it wasn't going to add much, given its percentage of the overall sail area, but it really did make quite a difference in light air downwind. They're rarely seen these days,.

The number of sails in a "fully-rigged" square-rigged vessel is a function of the size of the vessel. A smaller vessel, as pictured, will carry fewer square sails, the added complexity of a greater number of sails to break the sail plan into manageable segments not being necessary.
 
Photo number two is classified as a brigantine in the US, but is called a "schooner brig," or "hermaphrodite brig" in Europe. The height of the after mast isn't relevant. If a boomed fore and aft sail is carried on a shorter foremast as well as a square topsail, it's a square topsail schooner. 
 
As in the United States, USS Boxer, USN training brigantine. See: Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships: http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/sail/boxer4.htm
 
 
 

        And don't come out of that room until I tell ya to!       

Interesting information. Obviously a localized type and perhaps now extinct. From the contemporary drawings, the gaff mizzen sail indicated a later evolution. The vessel may indeed be "Ottoman," certainly as the drawings confirm.
 
Until a better term is discovered, in consideration of it's apparent national origin, why don't we call it a "turkey?"  

To my eye, the mainsail on the brig appears to be tightly furled on the main yard.
 
You are indeed correct that the Thames barge carries a spritsail rig.

Did Royal Navy boats carry oars of varying lengths to suit each rowing station as did whaleboats which carried oars between 16 to 18 feet long, together with a 22 foot long steering oar?

Fortunately, you don't have to worry about a model ship sinking if you didn't do a proper job of building it.  
 
Most all of us build models for fun. Some are interested in building to the highest archival standards possible, as an exercise in discipline and technique in pursuit of a "personal best," if nothing else. Others not so much. For some, learning about "best archival practices" is more of an academic exercise than anything else. All I can say for myself is that if I were a kit builder and was spending into the four figures on a kit that I expected to take three years to complete, I wouldn't be spending that much money and time on something that I considered to be just "good enough." Your mileage may vary, I suppose. 
 
It bears noting, however, that the hobby in Eastern Europe where ship models are entered in judged competitions, is considered more a competitive sport than a hobby and consequently what they consider "good enough" is from all appearances a whole lot better than what we consider "good enough." If they'd been as good at building rocket ships as they are at ship modeling, the Russians would have landed a man on the moon long before we did! At the end of the day, isn't the exercise of ship modeling all about the pursuit of perfection rather than just one's own opinion of what's  "good enough? "

Mechanical fastenings such as treenails and nails permit each plank to shrink and swell independently of the others, thereby spreading the wood movement proportionally over the entire structure, piece by piece, so long as the plank seams are not glued one to the other. When the seams are glued, the shrinkage (and swelling) of the solid glued piece will occur at the weakest point, often resulting in a split piece of wood or a cracked seam the width of the movement. Remember the percentage of movement, whatever it may be, is across the moving dimension of the piece. The larger the piece, the greater the movement across the moving dimension. If you glue a bunch pieces together, they will move as one. Instead of tiny bits of movement between each piece, you'll get the total movement of the glued pieces at one spot.
 
Flexible adhesives certainly mitigate the problem of wood movement to the extent they flex, but flexible joints may pose other structural problems in a model. The problem with any adhesive, including the epoxies, the limitations of their archival and working qualities.  These involve the degree of long-term changes in coloration, brittleness, acidic outgassing, loss of strength, particularly shear strength, and the reversibility of the bond in the event future conservation or restoration work may be required. These considerations usually vary greatly, depending upon the formulation of the particular adhesive. At present, the "gold standard" museum conservation epoxy adhesive is a product known as HXTAL NYL-1 designed specifically for the repair of glass and ceramic artifacts. It closely mimics the refractive index of glass and so produces an invisible repair.  It's claimed to be the only epoxy adhesive which does not yellow upon exposure to light. This is a very specialized (and expensive) epoxy adhesive having very exacting mixing and application requirements and, importantly, is not easily reversible, as far as i know. While it is an excellent product for glass and ceramic repair, it isn't very suitable for modeling because it has a very long minimum setting times in excess of three days! See: https://www.hxtal.com/ and http://www.lakesidepottery.com/HTML Text/Tips/Hxtal-NYL-instructions-glass-epoxy.htm
 
 

I'll admit in hindsight that this was perhaps not the best example because I do know it was not due to any shortcoming of the model designer, but because the kit was based exactly upon a contemporary model. I was unaware of the existence of a contemporary draught showing the same and would love to study a copy of that.  However, the draught doesn't lend any strength to an argument that the arrangement is correct. There's really no way a boat could be sailed the way it's rigged.
 
In fact, there are ways to rig a double-ended mainsheet with blocks at the quarters that serve the same purpose of leaving the tiller clear to helm without resort to a sheet horse at all, but the only purpose of a sheet horse is to allow the lower sheet block to clear the tiller without fouling it and the prototype can have no other purpose for that sheet horse.
 
All I can say is that there is no way the boat can be sailed the way that tiller is set up. The boom will cross amidships taking the lower sheet block with it sliding along the sheet horse every time the boat is tacked or jibed and every time that happens, the helmsman will be unable to control the tiller to complete the evolution because the sheet will foul the tiller. I know of no boat anywhere, save these two NMM models which have been cited, that has ever had such an arrangement. Chuck and I have discussed this and I don't dispute his position that the Model Shipways kit is a "model of a contemporary model." That's indeed one way to look at it. I don't know that he has any other explanation for it except that that's the way it is on the contemporary models. He certainly didn't make a mistake when designing the kit on that basis.
 
I'm not a "naysayer." I'm a "give me one good reason why" sayer!
 
I'd be interested in knowing what the curators at the NMM would have to say about it, or perhaps Ab Hoving, who knows as much about such things in that period as anybody.

Mechanical fastenings such as treenails and nails permit each plank to shrink and swell independently of the others, thereby spreading the wood movement proportionally over the entire structure, piece by piece, so long as the plank seams are not glued one to the other. When the seams are glued, the shrinkage (and swelling) of the solid glued piece will occur at the weakest point, often resulting in a split piece of wood or a cracked seam the width of the movement. Remember the percentage of movement, whatever it may be, is across the moving dimension of the piece. The larger the piece, the greater the movement across the moving dimension. If you glue a bunch pieces together, they will move as one. Instead of tiny bits of movement between each piece, you'll get the total movement of the glued pieces at one spot.
 
Flexible adhesives certainly mitigate the problem of wood movement to the extent they flex, but flexible joints may pose other structural problems in a model. The problem with any adhesive, including the epoxies, the limitations of their archival and working qualities.  These involve the degree of long-term changes in coloration, brittleness, acidic outgassing, loss of strength, particularly shear strength, and the reversibility of the bond in the event future conservation or restoration work may be required. These considerations usually vary greatly, depending upon the formulation of the particular adhesive. At present, the "gold standard" museum conservation epoxy adhesive is a product known as HXTAL NYL-1 designed specifically for the repair of glass and ceramic artifacts. It closely mimics the refractive index of glass and so produces an invisible repair.  It's claimed to be the only epoxy adhesive which does not yellow upon exposure to light. This is a very specialized (and expensive) epoxy adhesive having very exacting mixing and application requirements and, importantly, is not easily reversible, as far as i know. While it is an excellent product for glass and ceramic repair, it isn't very suitable for modeling because it has a very long minimum setting times in excess of three days! See: https://www.hxtal.com/ and http://www.lakesidepottery.com/HTML Text/Tips/Hxtal-NYL-instructions-glass-epoxy.htm
 
 

We flew a watersail on a friend's large spidsgatter years ago. I thought it wasn't going to add much, given its percentage of the overall sail area, but it really did make quite a difference in light air downwind. They're rarely seen these days,.

The traveler is blocked by the tiller.  Jibing would be pretty exciting if removing and replacing the tiller became part of the process.    The tiller should probably be under the traveler.

A lubber?
 
Good day to you, sir.  

Mark,
 
It was not uncommon for topsail schooners to carry a fore course - a square sail suspended from the lower yard. I have seen several examples in books about schooners, such as the French privateer Le Comtesse Emererian 1810, ex privateer Herald or HMS Pictou 1815, HMS Sea Lark and HMS Alban1817, US revenue Cutter Louisiana 1819, and slaver Mary Adeline 1852. Howard Chapelle's "The Baltimore Clipper" has numerous other examples, including drawings from Marestier taken off ships and published in 1824.
 
A fore course doesn't seem to be common on modern topsail schooners, but some photos (below) of the modern French Navy Belle Poule show her flying a square course with a spar to the clew something like a spinnaker or a studding sail! Note that they also have a water sail on the main boom, so they are spreading a lot of canvas to catch the wind. Like about everything else I have seen about schooner rigging it seems to have been up to the owner's/captain's whim.
 

 
While I agree that brigantines are supposed to have a taller main mast than a fore mast, what else would you call the second example? I'd call it a topsail ketch but I have never heard that name used!

I checked Marquardt, and he does not name the rigs of ships from regions other than the northern European regions. He labels the shiptypes, not the rigs.
 
I don't know how it is in Turkey, but in the Netherlands, you can sort of classify the shiptypes, but there are many 'in betweens', as ships were always build by a specific builder for a specific buyer. Ie: it was not type x that was agreed upon but a ship 'like the one you build for my neighbor, but I would liketo have it slightly different'. 
 
I do very much like the (for a Dutchman) rather excentric rigs, and sometimes completely different ways of sailhandling that you see in the mediterranean ships.
 
Jan

Interesting information. Obviously a localized type and perhaps now extinct. From the contemporary drawings, the gaff mizzen sail indicated a later evolution. The vessel may indeed be "Ottoman," certainly as the drawings confirm.
 
Until a better term is discovered, in consideration of it's apparent national origin, why don't we call it a "turkey?"  

To my eye, the mainsail on the brig appears to be tightly furled on the main yard.
 
You are indeed correct that the Thames barge carries a spritsail rig.

Excellent point! It addresses a shortcoming of internet forums: Everybody has a soapbox, but some have a lot more to say than others do.  Forums are like good restaurants: Once they are discovered, they often tend to begin to decline in quality. The reason there are so many highly accomplished and experienced modelers on this forum, aside from its association with the Nautical Research Guild, is because they seek out each other and the rest of us are lucky to be able to look over their shoulders. They are here and make MSW what it is because this is where they can continue to learn from those who are playing the game at their level.  When a forum becomes inundated with "newbies," the "level of play" naturally drops and the "high achievers" find it increasingly less worth their while and drift off.
 
Learning is an exercise best done with the eyes open and the mouth closed, (although in my case clearly more so of the former than the latter.) The most useful learning tool of all it the search engine. Notwithstanding that most of the forum platform software packaged search engines are disappointing in the performance when compared with stand-alone search engines such as Google and Bing, they still remain the best way to look up something specific within a given forum. Given the size and age of MSW forum, there is a very high likelihood that most any question one might encounter in the course of building a ship model, excepting really esoteric historical minutia, will have been addressed, often at length, before. It's poor internet forum manners to ask others to answer a question before having exhausted your own efforts to find the answer on your own. Don't expect others to become your "information codependents." Everybody soon tires of a forum that requires hours of wasted time "separating the fly poop from the pepper" (like that other ship modeling forum we all know.) The very basic questions "newbies" ask over and over again have all been asked before. While I encourage and welcome beginners, I must confess that I rarely am moved to devote my time to answering a question they could have found themselves using the search engine.
 
To the original poster who bemoaned the lack of responses to his build log, and to the management of the forum which encourages "build logging" and "newbies" to the hobby (and we all should,) I express my sympathy. On the one hand, build logs are a valuable feature of the forum, if not its heart and soul, but on the other hand, the "build logger" has to understand that he is competing with all the other build logs for attention and it's a jungle out there. If you are new to the hobby and are posting the seventeenth active build log of a popular kit model, your build log isn't going to generate the same amount of interest as the scratch-built masterpiece of one of the published "Superstars of Ship Modeling." I'm not knocking kits by a long shot, but they are ship modeling's "gateway drug." There is an inevitable progression, at rates varying as to the individual, from building kits to "The Dark Side" of scratch-building. No two ways about it, there is far more to learn from following the scratch-build of a never-before- modeled prototype. Don't feel discouraged starting out. Learning to crawl is just as much an accomplishment as learning to walk. 

Bob:
Tru Vue sells a wide range of archival glass and acrylics for framing and case makers.  Their acrylic product under the name of "Optimum" has all the advantages of glass without the weight or shattering hazard.  It is expensive.

Bob:
 
The bad odor from hide glue occurs when a pot of glue is left to set for a few days, unused, until it turns rancid.  Discard unused glue when done with a glue up and there will be no problem.  The glue comes in a dried granular form that is mixed with water and heated just prior to use.  The dry granules are odorless.   
 
 I am involved in making a display case for a Native American artifact; a wooden, Tlingit halibut hook, and this raised concern about the archival properties of glues, finishes and types of wood.  All common "wood glues" off-gas ascetic acid as do finishes based on organic oils or waxes.  This off-gassing persists at ever diminishing levels for years and can accumulate to deleterious levels in the confines of a display case.   I've been unable to find data on the archival suitability of CA.  When it "kicks over" it does emit a puff of very disagreeable gas.  Again, I don't know the chemical nature of this gas or its longevity.  Nor are the archival properties of Titebond's liquid hide glue to be found.   What my research boiled down to is traditional hide glue and shellac are the only common glue and finish that do not pose any archival threat.  These are what I will use but I still worked unobtrusive ventilation holes into the case's design.         

CA isn't even close to the same as PVA.  Yellow wood glue is PVA (as is normal white glue).  CA is 'super glue' type glue which comes in various speeds and thicknesses but shares common attributes with, including that it will stick to your fingers (or anything else) and if it gets on a visible wood surface it will be extremely difficult to remove as it will soak into the wood fibers and create a super-hard spot that will show up through almost all finishes as even paint sometimes.

As I said above, I try to avoid CA at all costs when working with wood.  If I need to bind wood to metal or some other material CA is one possibility, but an epoxy would be a better solution whenever possible.

Hi tomsimon - Your question is one that I wondered when I first started building and for me it came back to one thing - time!
 
If your in no rush and are happy to take your time then carpenters glue or better aliphatic resin is my choice.  It gives me loads of time to place whatever I'm gluing where I want it and the clean up is so easy.  It is for me the laid back enjoyable way of building.
 
If however you need to build somewhat faster, then CA can be dropped between the carpenters glue to grab what your gluing much faster.  I find this method very unforgiving but thats just my way of building  - others find this way better.
 
Try both and you'll find what suits your building technique 

Well, I think the main reason people don't add "in my opinion" disclaimers to their answers to direct questions is because they realize nobody's much interested in anybody else's opinion. Facts, yes. Opinions, no. Everybody already has opinions. They don't need any more. If somebody disagrees with someone else's statement of fact, they are free to offer evidence to the contrary, and should. That's the problem with the internet. Any fool can pontificate about anything they know nothing about and most do. (Can you say, "herd immunity?")
 
For example:
 
1. "CA is the best choice for planking a hull using Chuck’s method." That's an opinion. It needs facts to back it up. The majority of people who've used CA are adverse to its use for many sound reasons beginning with the difficulty of working with it, the fact that it soaks into wood and affects subsequent finishing results, it is not a recognized archival material, has a relatively short "working time" before it sets up, is much more difficult to un-bond than PVA, has a relatively short shelf life and a relatively high price, and so on. Your mileage may vary. At the end of the day, "best practices" dictate that all parts of a model to the extent possible should be mechanically fastened, not just glued, anyway. 
 
2.  "I have models over 25 years old done with CA that are just fine and look great." The fact that you have models done with CA that are over 25 years old is a fact. That they are just fine and look great is an opinion, or, at best, an unproven fact. It's too early to call. Let us know how they are holding up in another 75 years. The "industry standard" is a model that properly cared for should last 100 years without exhibiting any deterioration. At present, CA hasn't been around long enough to know if it lasts that well.
 
3.  "I don’t think any well built ship model survives dropping to the floor, it’s best not to do that." Now, that's a fact. Don't ask me how I know this.
 
3. (Again) "Edge gluing is not only totally unnecessary it’s also detrimental to the look of the hull." That's a fact, not an opinion. 
 
4.   "I doubt the humidity variance in most first world homes creates an issue."  Whether it does or doesn't depends upon many variables in every instance, but "first world homes" isn't one of them.   It's a fact that humidity is a factor to be considered in any fine woodworking. Frolich addresses a substantial problem he encountered with wood shrinkage in his fine book, The Art of Ship Modeling. One ignores it at their peril. It's sort of like Covid in that respect. 
 
5.  I’ll put up my nine models as examples of using CA for hulls any time." Not to worry. I don't think anybody doubts you built them with CA adhesive and they are still sticking together. See No. 2. above.
 
Many don't offer what they have to say as "just their opinion" because they have little interest in expressing their opinions. They are only interested in sharing what they know to be true. If somebody prefers to offer opinions, they should go to FaceBook.   Preferences are largely irrelevant. There's a right way and a wrong way to do most things, and then there are "preferences," which, more often than not are just excuses for doing it the wrong way.  My wife insists that loading a toilet paper roll so the paper end hangs down the back of the roll, between the roll and the wall, instead of off the front of the roll like you've probably seen in every hotel you've ever been in, is her "preference." She was not convinced when I showed her the original patent for the toilet paper roll which clearly shows the roll coming off the front and not the back. That's obviously the way it's supposed to work. So, she has her own "preference," and i have my own bathroom.  

Yes, that is a good observation. However, there are many MSW forumites who are greatly lacking in nautical nomenclature fluency. The world of ships and the sea has its own language and it's different for every commonly spoken language in the world. Even when the spoken language is the same, the nautical nomenclature may differ in different areas, just as the words "bonnet" and "hood" refer to the same part of an automobile in Britain and the US respectively, while a "bonnet" and a "hood" don't both refer to the same item of headgear in both Britain and the US.  And this confusion is compounded when one tries to translate "nauticalese" from  an entirely foreign language, often making the understanding of instructions for the building of model kits imported from places where a different language is spoken quite a challenge, even for the fluent "nautical" speaker in his own language, let alone one who is not.
 
As one who had the benefit of growing up with maritime nomenclature "as a first language," being involved as both an amateur and a professional with ships and the sea all my life, having a father who worked in the industry as well, it is often apparent to me when forum posters "do not speak the language." Unfortunately, there's no "google translate" for nautical nomenclature, nor language school that teaches it, as far as I know. It can only be learned by "immersion," an apt metaphor for "sink or swim." I can't imagine the difficulty a new ship model builder from Kansas or Oklahoma who's never seen the ocean must have trying to build a sailing ship model! (Parenthetically, I've seen some highly skilled modelers who are distinguished by their careful research nevertheless make glaring errors in a model, particularly in things like rigging, because they obviously have no experience sailing vessels similar to the one they are modeling.*) To do so with that handicap is quite an accomplishment! I will say that any ship modeler who is contemplating investing in books related to the hobby would do well to make one of their initial library acquisitions a very good maritime dictionary and keep it at hand at all times. (My top recommendation in that regard would be The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea.) The use of such a dictionary will go a long way in making their forum posts more understandable and, thus, encourage more helpful responses.
 
 
 
*Example:
 
This Model Shipways 18th Century Longboat kit is built in complete conformance with the kit's instructions and, I have it on good authority, is an exact "model of a contemporary model" in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, England.
 
Who can spot what's wrong with it first? 
 
(Hint: It's something that should be immediately obvious to any sailor.)
 
     

Let's call a spade a spade. The search engine feature of the MSW forum platform is inadequate to address the complexity of the forum's content as well as one would expect based on experience with much more sophisticated search engines like Google, etc. (The development of these "AI-heavy" search engines is driven by their great profitability as "data mining" platforms.) This is true of most every forum search engine I've ever used.
 
There is a "hack" for this problem, however. The trick is to search the MSW forum using a more powerful search engine than the MSW one.
 
The problem:
 
For example, "drifter steam capstan," using the quotations marks to indicate the full phrase, entered in the MSW search engine yields "There were no results for your search."  Entering drifter steam capstan as separate words in the MSW search engine gets you the same "no results" response. Entering "steam capstan" will get you a fair number of results for the use of the term in the forum. Entering steam capstan as separate words rather than a phrase yields three pages of results for steam, steamer, steamboat, and capstan.
 
The hack:
 
Go to a search engine like Google and enter a search for your terms occurring in the MSW forum in the following manner:
 
"drifter steam capstan" + Modelshipworld
 
Google will tell you that there's no result found for the phrase drifter steam capstan in MSW, but it will alternately provide you with "results for drifter steam capstan + Modelshiipworld" (no quotation marks.) You can review those results and, by reading their website sources, see a much more focused set of results than the MSW forum search engine provides. 
 
The first result is:
The next is:
From all indications, these two results are as close as one can get and quickly accessible without wading through useless results
 
 

Excellent point! It addresses a shortcoming of internet forums: Everybody has a soapbox, but some have a lot more to say than others do.  Forums are like good restaurants: Once they are discovered, they often tend to begin to decline in quality. The reason there are so many highly accomplished and experienced modelers on this forum, aside from its association with the Nautical Research Guild, is because they seek out each other and the rest of us are lucky to be able to look over their shoulders. They are here and make MSW what it is because this is where they can continue to learn from those who are playing the game at their level.  When a forum becomes inundated with "newbies," the "level of play" naturally drops and the "high achievers" find it increasingly less worth their while and drift off.
 
Learning is an exercise best done with the eyes open and the mouth closed, (although in my case clearly more so of the former than the latter.) The most useful learning tool of all it the search engine. Notwithstanding that most of the forum platform software packaged search engines are disappointing in the performance when compared with stand-alone search engines such as Google and Bing, they still remain the best way to look up something specific within a given forum. Given the size and age of MSW forum, there is a very high likelihood that most any question one might encounter in the course of building a ship model, excepting really esoteric historical minutia, will have been addressed, often at length, before. It's poor internet forum manners to ask others to answer a question before having exhausted your own efforts to find the answer on your own. Don't expect others to become your "information codependents." Everybody soon tires of a forum that requires hours of wasted time "separating the fly poop from the pepper" (like that other ship modeling forum we all know.) The very basic questions "newbies" ask over and over again have all been asked before. While I encourage and welcome beginners, I must confess that I rarely am moved to devote my time to answering a question they could have found themselves using the search engine.
 
To the original poster who bemoaned the lack of responses to his build log, and to the management of the forum which encourages "build logging" and "newbies" to the hobby (and we all should,) I express my sympathy. On the one hand, build logs are a valuable feature of the forum, if not its heart and soul, but on the other hand, the "build logger" has to understand that he is competing with all the other build logs for attention and it's a jungle out there. If you are new to the hobby and are posting the seventeenth active build log of a popular kit model, your build log isn't going to generate the same amount of interest as the scratch-built masterpiece of one of the published "Superstars of Ship Modeling." I'm not knocking kits by a long shot, but they are ship modeling's "gateway drug." There is an inevitable progression, at rates varying as to the individual, from building kits to "The Dark Side" of scratch-building. No two ways about it, there is far more to learn from following the scratch-build of a never-before- modeled prototype. Don't feel discouraged starting out. Learning to crawl is just as much an accomplishment as learning to walk.