JerryTodd

Well, at a Toyota dealer I'm surprised you didn't end up in a Dodge truck.

I'm a long way from needing jolly tars as yet; my need is for 1850's US sailors, Marines, and officers.

Shame they never consider 1:35 scale - all you can find in 1:35 is WWII mud-slingers

Water World and Heaven's Gate were epic movies, epic failures that is. There's a few kits that fit that version of "epic."

Bolt-ropes are sewn on in a paticular way. They do not attach to the edge of the cloth, but actually lie ON the cloth. On square sails the lie on the forward face of the sail so they are less apt to rub on shrouds, etc behind the sail. The stitching that holds them to the sail comes out of the sail, goes over the edge and into the bolt-rope, through the sail, and goes around again and through the next strand over. In reality the thread goes between strands and through the third, then into the sail. Going through one strand isn't critical on a model. The stitches advance along the sail with the lay of the bolt-rope so it buries itself in the lay of the line. I skip 3 or 4 rope strands, where-as the real thing is stitched in every strand of the bolt-rope. That's totally up to you. The real thread is waxed flax, heavy and doubled. On a model, one strand of light thread should be scale enough. Pull it snug in the direction you're sewing towards, not back where you've already sewn or the sail will draw up and kink. The sail will pucker a little into the lay of the rope - that's fine and as it should be, it wraps the sail around the bolt-rope. Every so often, a few turns are made, a whipping, typically every yard or so, on either side of grommets, eyes, and the like. These serve as pull-stops. If the stitching should break somewhere, being a whip-stitch it'll easily pull out, the whippings try to keep it from pulling out too far. This obviously isn't critical on a static model, but it can be seen if you look at real sails and besides adding a touch of realism, is a good place to start a new thread because the whole thing doesn't have to be done with one length of thread. I make cringles and eyes for my RC model's sails by taking a turn around a rod of the right diameter, like toothpicks, and whip it at the overlap. The real things were usually spliced in. That can usually be represented by just whipping a join of two ends of the bolt-rope with enough overlap for the eye and whipped at either end of the eye. In the pics, note how the stitching disappears into the lay of the bolt rope on the front of the sail. You need to hold out the sail and the bolt-rope as you sew it, don't stretch them, just keep some tension on both. My sails tend to be a much larger scale (1:36) than most models here, but with some good magnification, it's not difficult to do. I find it easier to insert the needle between strands on the front side, through the third (or not, it's your call), into the sail, snug it up, move 3 or 4 strands over, and do it again. I reinforce my bolt-ropes with fabric glue as they are working sails

I don't think I have $1k into a 8 foot long RC sailing ship, including radio gear. It may be pushing $400.

So it IS a boat you've been building! Some folks put a cover over the drum of the winch servo. It has to fit close to keep the line from getting between the flange and the cover, but the idea is to trap the coils of the sheet on the drum when there isn't tension. While to my eye it's looks sketchy; like if you pay out the sheet in no air, and the coils get inside each other on the drum; but the folks that use this seem happy with it; like John Dowd on his Bluenose and J-class Endeavor and Antony Bell on his Jolie Brise. Here's the works in Dowd's J-Class, note the main sheet winch on the left; My sail arm servo runs the "3-arm-sheeter" for the heads'ls, and it also sheets the driver/spanker (there used to be a difference) on the servo's arm directly. It sheets out the spanker with the servo centered, and sheets in when moved left OR right. With a servo-stretcher giving it 180° of travel, that gets me plenty of sheet. The spanker sheet anchors in the waterway, runs through a block on the boom, then to a fairlead in the opposite waterway, and on to the servo - so it is "doubled." My issue with the whole thing is the servo moves too fast. I'm sure there's some expensive item available that will deal with that, but I don't have one. Speaking of tension on drums, you may consider mounting your brace winches on their sides so the drum is vertical. Slack is much less of an issue this way, and it may help you out with space limitations and access. This pic shows two winch servos with a couple of Bizarroland drums to illustrate the idea, I hope. The braces would run athwartship from the drums, but you can turn this anyway you like I'd think. This idea is based on the old Rattlesnake that inspired me in the first place. L'Heureaux used a motor and slipping belts that I doubt gave him very good fine control, but that's not an issue with winch servos. The braces don't develop so much slack for this to be a problem if the flanges are deep enough, the spanker sheet can develop much more slack and could be a problem, even with the winch on it's side..

Most boats had a swell for the shrouds and stays like you'd see on a t'gallant mast for instance, but some had cleats or wedges instead. The shrouds tend to be looped around and clamped with a couple of wire clamps, but further back they were seized with wire. One newer boat I saw had a sort of spider band on the mast and the shrouds had thimbled eyes shackled to it.

I hope there aren't any batteries in there anywhere

Got 2 yards of gray Supplex from a different supplier than usual. It was much cheaper than their normal price; a remnant maybe? It seemed a little dark, but not so bad in the photo, for the sails of a British frigate.

I wager everyone that's built an extended frame model has had this little joke creep into their head.

Don't let these pudgy phalanges hear you, or I'll never get them to do what I want.

None of the boats I worked on glued the lines to the belaying pins

Outboard

And all the little support rods that held the bulwarks up... I think I'm going to look at pin rails next.

Epoxied the other bulwark on, which cracked and had to be glued and filled. Made the chain tyes for the tops'l yards with chain, shackles, and gin-blocks I've had since 2009. Corrected the front plates on the pivot gun slides. I saw a youtube video on photo-etching that looked pretty good. I'd like to make a lot of the hardware and details for these guns that way. Changed her rig to a barkentine and I'll be posting in the Gazela Primeiro log from now on. Just kidding. But still haven't come up with parrals and it's beginning to get cold in the shop

Stretch your lines before you put them on the model, it'll work out a lot of the tendency to twist, and don't glue lines to belaying pins - one of Murphy's laws of ship modeling is; you'll only ever need to adjust lines that are glued.

Typically when gluing wood with such glue, you spread glue evenly over the surface to be glued and clamp until it just comes out of the seam. To much and you "starve the joint" that is, you squeeze out all the glue. It's not odd at all that a couple of spots will easily break free considering there's very little relative bearing surface involved.

As big as yours Vic, maybe not as tall.

Um, 3/8" square - ish

I tried plan C on a bit of scrap and it seems like it should work out. I hammered an end a little thinner, and worked it back on itself. I put a steel rod where the bolts pictured about will go and pinched it shut in the vise, then tapped it round. I can cut the notches that make it a hinge with a jeweler's saw

Maybe when America is "great again" they'll be giving those little beauties away, but I think it's more likely that getting one will be even less likely in the future. I'm pretty much stuck with stone tools and flints.

So, here it is with some filling, sanding, seams marked, and dry paint. I found a little stamped lion face, (I may have got this from you Vic), and wanted to make Constellation's cat heads by pressing it into some clay and casting them in resin, but I can't find my casting resin, so I tried 5-minute epoxy. That set up more like rubber than plastic, so we'll have to come back to that. The extra epoxy was used to glue in the starboard forward bulkheads. Today I made another attempt at making a parrel collar. I have some thick sheet copper chimney flashing left over from an old job that I use for lots of things, Constellation's and Pride's tillers for instance, are made from this stuff. At this scale it looks more like the actual parrels than the thin sheet-brass attempt before. So I cut off a strip slightly more than 3/16", formed it into the size circle I wanted, and cut it into two halves. Soldiered some brass tubing on the ends.... And cut the tubing to make the hinge portions. If it were only that easy. I had to re-solder the tubing on a couple of times, and finally when I thought it was done and was cleaning it up, another section of tubing came off. This would have been perfect, but obviously it wouldn't hold up to actual use, so it's on to plan C. Plan C: Hammer out the ends of the copper strip enough that I can roll them back to form the tubes like I did the sheet brass one before.

These are the same servos the fellas with the 1:24 scale SC&H Cruizer brigs and Surprise models are using, including the rudder servo. You should have no problems with the ability of the servos to handle your rig. The compression springs on the slides are something to think about. They are compressed most when the yards are square. If they are too strong they can bow, or even break the yard, not to mention putting a lot of load on the winch. Since braces tend to anchor on standing rigging, you'll see some pulling there as well. The springs only need to be strong enough to maintain tension - that tension keeps the brace on it's drum. I judged the length of travel for the winches by eye, and it's greater than it needs to be. Someone with a better mind for geometry and mathematics, or just a bit more trail-and-error than I invested, could probably determine a more precise length for the servo's travel and save some space in the set-up. I think I could lop off almost an inch in my case, and probably will on Macedonian's set-up. The extra length doesn't harm anything, but where space is an issue, it can matter. The "Mega-Sail-Arm" is a tall servo, and that may be an issue for you. I scaled a drawing of Epervier's lines to 1:36 and laid them over my Pride of Baltimore's 1:20 lines and with much less drag to your keel, you should have more head-room over more of the interior than Pride does. ie: You should have no problem with that sail-arm servo's height, as I have two of them in Pride. If you do go that route to control your fore-n-afts, get a "servo-stretcher" from Servo City or get a sail-arm set up for full 180° travel. You'll want it to be able to sheet properly out off-the-wind. Some transmitters, BTW, can program a channel in the same way. The Stretcher is great, it lets you set the center position and the amount of travel to either side all separately.

Card "hinges" applied Eye-bolts added Some white paint And some black paint too (still wet)