JerryTodd
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Everything posted by JerryTodd
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They really won't make much difference in keeping water off the deck, but if they were functional there would be a chance of one or more panels being knocked off or damaged in such an occurrence. The bigger problem is snagging rigging, though probably less of an issue than the ones up forward would be with the heads'l sheets hanging over them. The biggest problem is making the hardware to make them functional. This is one of the ship's original hinges from the forward bulwarks. It's bronze and the were 12 port/starboard pairs, each pair different. Back aft they are probably all alike, or more-so than the bow. I don't know how many panels there were back aft. The drawing in the last post shows one in the center, and another beside it about the same size. The drawing makes no implication at all of any other panels. If they were all about the same size, as would seem logical at the more symmetrical stern, there should be 9 panels based on the drawing, but... I've only ever found one photo that shows a stern panel open or removed. They were removable as this 1907 image shows... This 1884 image implies there were more narrower panels than the 1959 drawing implies; or something's changed since 1859. In this image from the same time frame, it's impossible to see there are any panels at all. There's at least one where the crane is, right of the sailors, and it has the opening for the main brace to come inboard. BTW; that horizontal timber below the hole isn't the bumpkin, it's a knee that braces it, where the bumpkin meets the hull is obscured by the crane. This 1890's image shows at least two panels aft, by the tell-tale support rods, but notice the center portion is now a fixed, solid bulwark. I'm guessing after the pivot guns were removed, the stern bulwarks were changed, but a few retained to facilitate handling the boats (note the jacobs ladders hanging aft in the 1880's images.) By 1914 there were no folding bulwarks on the ship's stern at all, just a wainscoted taffrail. I'm modeling the ship circa 1856, three years before the dry-dock drawing. I've never been able to find any information on the appearance of the stern, the pivot guns, and the folding bulwarks, fore or aft, from her early years - the dry-dock drawing is all I have ever seen. So, based on that, and that they were there to facilitate the function of the aft pivot gun, I'm assuming, they were all generally the same size with a center panel right aft, and four panels around either side, nine panels in all.
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My friend Mark gave me a bit of LED strip left over from something he did to his old truck's dashboard. I hooked them up to ta 12volt battery and stuck them in the model. I've been thinking about some sort of lighting inside the model, I'm finding I need more light to see anything, as well as reading glasses for things close up. The LEDS are red which lit up the inside alright, but everything is red. I'm not trying to preserve night vision, but I may need to see colors when digging around in the model's guts. So, while I like this LED light strip, I don't think red LEDs are gonna do it for me. Mr Taylor will appreciate this bit... I began building the aft drop-bulwarks. Like the forward bulwarks, I'm not modeling the nine or so separate panels that make it up, rather I'm building it as a single unit and engraving the seams to imply the separate panels. Unlike the forward bulwarks, I'm building this one in place. I dipped a cut-off strip of poplar from another project in some ammonia and bent it around the stern cap-rail. Then I glued and nailed it down. Then I cut off sections of 1/32 bass sheet, with the grain vertical, and glued it on the outside edge of the strip I just nailed down. This is the outer sheathing of the bulwark. Another strip was dipped in ammonia and clamped on top of the lower strip to take the shape. Then it was glued at the top of the sheathing. Next the openings for the main braces to come inboard from the boomkins will be made, then the inside will be sheathed in the same manner.
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Someone was paying attention The holes in the fair-lead bitt on Constellation are as polished as I can get them, but you're right, it's still not ideal. I recently cut an oversized cutting board made of that white Teflon like plastic, in two, and wound up with a 1/2" square strip from the center; wonder how that happened? I'm going to replace the bar with a portion of that strip. All my rigging will be walked from Dacron sail thread (polyester). Stranded synthetic line actually moves better through fair-leads than natural fiber line, non-stranded, or braided line. I think the strands make for less surface contact. Additionally, anywhere the line has to turn a corner tighter than 90°, there will be a functional block. In setting up Constellation's braces for that last sail I was using some cotton stuff I happened to have on hand, and there was too much friction for it to function, it was scraping lint off at every fair-lead, and you could hear the winch straining. I walked up the line in the picture and it was like butter. The videos were done with the Dacron line. Originally I was going to control the fore and main course yard braces, AND the three tops'l yard braces. Chafing and friction was why I reduced that to just the three tops'l yards.
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A 3D model of the servo tray used in Macedonian, Constellation, and any other square-rigger I build, and a bit of how it works and the reasoning behind it. Reasoning #1; to control the sails of the model as realistically, but as mechanically simply as possible. This system, I think, is as reliable and maintainable as I can manage, and can be adapted to almost any 1:48 scale or larger square-rigger without need of machining tools; 3D printers; laser cutters, special skills, talent, looks, etc. (It would fit in smaller scale models, but may require smaller servos which may require hacking regular servos into winches and so forth, thus increasing the complexity for some folks.) The wooden disks are the winch drums for the braces each on it's own HiTec HS785HB winch servo. The right one (your right) is the main/mizzen drum, the left one is the fore. These control the tops'l yards on their respective masts. Two drums for each yard, one takes up as the other pays out. The servo and drum slide fore-n-aft on rods with compression springs to maintain tension on the braces so they don't fall off their drums and tangle. Adjustment of the braces is done at the other end where they anchor in the rig. It's not practical to try to adjust them at the winches. The large servo is a HiTec HS815BB "Mega sail-arm" servo with a "servo-stretcher" installed to give it a full 180° swing. This servo controls the driver sheet directly on it's own (white) arm, and the heads'l sheets on a pair of (red) arms mounted port and starboard. The red arms are not connected to the servo and may move freely. One or the other is pushed by the servo's arm to sheet the heads'ls. As shown, the heads'ls are sheeted all the way in on the port side AND the driver is sheeted all the way in as well. The starboard heads'l sheets are loose. Only a single heads'l sheet per side is shown, but typically there are three p/s pairs. The sheets come from the heads'ls forward (left), pass through a fair-lead on the post shown at the far left of the tray, run to a sheave in the end of the the arm on that side and back to the post. It then leads down to an anchor on the tray where it can be adjusted as needed. I'm thinking of using a portion of one of these to anchor the sheets on the tray: The whole tray is held on the "mechanical deck" inside the model by three screws, and can be removed through the main hatch as a unit if need be. No modifications have to be made to any servo, there-by not voiding any warranties, etc. Sailing Constellation has shown that control of only the tops'l yards is sufficient so long as all the squares are sheeted snug; and works better than controlling the course yards as control is imparted to the center of the stack of sails, rather than near the bottom. and click the pic for another video...
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Ok, back in the shop and got the main mast 8 sided; round; where it needs to be roud; banded under the cheeks; cheeks made, shaped, and affixed; banding over the cheeks applied, all clamped up; and what looks more like a Polynesian war club than a mast is waiting for the glue to fully set. The main and fore need rubbing paunches, and all three need their tenons cut top and bottom.
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Wood masts for a plastic model... Tips?
JerryTodd replied to SomethingIsFishy's topic in Plastic model kits
In the several Revel Constitution/United States models I've built, besides replacing the smallest spars with wood, the topmasts and lowers as well as the lower yards are hollow. These I filled with epoxy (JB Weld) and a metal rod, usually a length of metal coat-hanger. A couple of these kits were made to sail by radio-control, and the course yards were controlled by a rod inside the lower mast to a bell-crank below deck, in effect, achieving the same result as above. BTW: I've found bamboo skewers and chopsticks to be nice material for very light spars. Up in the storage areas of the Naval Academy Museum in Preble Hall there were at least two dozen Revel Constitution models given by alumnists to the museum. Every one built out of the box, and every one with bent and deformed plastic spars.
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Hi Jim, thank you for the kind words. Did you check out the Constellation log? She got wet again, but this time she really sailed, no bumping the bottom in a pool - it was great! Still making boards into sticks on this one. I'm dyin to get Mac painted and in the water. With Pride photo-bombing in the back.
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To make Macedonian's lower masts, I looked at various sources. This forum, Internet searches, period pieces like Steel's. Photos of models. But while I could see the end product, it was hard for me to visualize what was going on, or how it got to that point. Lee's Masting and Rigging was, in some ways, the clearest and easiest to comprehend; my problem with Lee's is trying to pick MY time-frame from the stew of data he presents. Often only parts of things change, so you have to piece it together; checks from 1800-1816, hounds from 1770-1820, rubbing paunch from 1810-, brains from Abby Normal, and that sort of thing. For my 1812ish frigate it seems, if I interpret all this correctly, The mast can be a single piece with cheeks and rubbing paunch (used to be the front fish) added on. It tapers from the deck to the top end. From the top of the cheeks/hounds down, it's round except it's left flat on the sides where the cheeks attach. The cheeks are rounded themselves to nearly blend into the mast, but there's a bit of a step or channel formed so they don't taper down to nothing at the sides. The real hounds are a separate piece scarfed onto the cheeks. I found it better to actually do this so they weren't in the way or getting damaged. Lee's gives the proportions of these parts; for instance, the rubbing paunch is 1/3 the width of the mast. I didn't put any taper in the space between decks, and the bury below the gundeck is 8-sided. After shaping the core of the mast, I used strips of copper tape left-over from Constellation's bottom to make the banding. Every-other band where the cheeks are is under them and need to go on before the cheeks. It's not as clean and simple as Constellation's 1850's mast and spars, but it's not as complicated as it first appears. My drawing of how I'm constructing Macedonian's masts. The side views don't show the rubbing paunch. Mainmast of HMS Impregnable showing cheek pieces and rubbing paunch. There's filler blocks next to the cheeks for the banding that goes over the them - I don't see this for my 1810-1812 period. Mizzen tapered Fore tapered Mizzen cheeks glued on Mizzen banding over cheeks applied, and rubbing paunch attached. Upper part of fore mast shaped and banding applied. Port-side cheek piece is cut and shaped.
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How much for four wheels; not the drums, stand, etc - just the wheels?
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I work in 1:36 scale
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All but three yards have jackstays now. I ran out of eye-pins and had to order some more. 11/15/2016: 144 More eye-pins arrived yesterday and the last three yards got their jack-stays today! And all three models to scale relative to each other:
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There's photos and video online of them up-rigging and down-rigging Niagara, you could sort of diorama a scene from one of those, hauling a bundled sail up, or down, people aloft bending, or unbending another sail. Gives you a reason to only have a few sails and some bare poles mixed.
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I know, she dresses up, goes out for a sail, and gets ignored. Not so, you see I made a new set of winch drums, and while the glue sets up on Macedonian I've been installing jack-stays on Constellation's yards. The main tops'l yard was already done, I've got the both course yards done, three tops'l yard, and two t'gallants done so far. Drilling holes in the yard for the eye-pins on the drill press. I use a shooting board with a V-groove I use for planing the spars when I'm making them, to hold the yard for drilling. Line up the bit with the bottom of the groove and the mark on top and you're drilling right through the center. The "eye-bolts" on the left are finer gauge copper and I don't think are up to the task so I use the eye-pins on the right that I get from Bluejacket. I use the .032 brass rod for the jack-stays. It's a little over-scale for Constellation but not too awful, and it does the job. I put a 90° in one end, thread the rod through the eyes, which are about 24" apart in this scale (5/8"), bend the other end back, and snip off the excess with flush cutters.
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The port side is caught up with the starboard side now, and I did a LOT of sanding of the clumpy epoxy on the port side. There's some filling to do, and the rest of the quarter galleries to do. I also need to notch the channels before I permanently install them. Still more to do, but I'm much closer to getting some paint on her.
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Please, Omega, try not to be so critical of my work - you'll give me a complex. Assembling the port side gallery, and moldings. I also rough cut those little channels for the t'gallanet/royal back-stays. The epoxy on the port-side wale set kind of lumpy and is gonna take some major sanding effort, like belt-sander effort.
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There's whole books on hydro-statics and stability, but to put it as simply as possible, on a scale model, internal ballast is not enough, as this fellow learned: You simple can't get the center of gravity low enough within the hull. The more weight you add, the higher the CG moves as you're stacking weight up inside. Because Macedonian and Constellation have long flat-ish keels, the best form of external ballast is a bar or tube. I use a tube and would gladly use a lead bar instead if I could gather the gumption to cast such a beast. Some folks use fins. A fin moves the weight further down, like moving the skinny kid further from the balance-point to balance the fat kid on the other end of the see-saw. Here's Stad Amsterdam a model comparable in size to mine. She uses a fin keel that you can see being installed in this video. https://youtu.be/Yj3EBwU6Elo?t=152 If you watch her sailing you see she still heels way over despite the fin; because she's showing too much sail in what are basically scale storm conditions. When it's blowing 20+, you're pushing into scale hurricane winds! Fins are deep. In that video they're launching at a bulkhead, and it takes two people to do the job. I'm launching most of the time at a shoreline or ramp. With a fin like that I'd have to wade out to water deep enough to launch the model. By using a ballast tube, my launch-cart is basically a boat trailer and I hardly have to get into a foot of water to launch, as you can see at the beginning and end of my video... I can also launch and retrieve all by myself, without help. Whatever sort of external ballast used, there's one common feature that sells it hands-down; it's removable. By unscrewing two threaded rods, I can easily detach the model from 42 pounds of ballast. I can lift the model and move it around alone, and safer for me and the model. Constellation still needs about 15 pounds of ballast added internally to get her to her waterline and trim her or she sits about 2 inches too high. I also have easily removable t'gallants and royals, the courses can be bunted up, and the model can essentially be under tops'ls and jib in a few minutes if the wind's too much for her plain sail suit.
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Maybe not in 1:24, but your diorama's been built. I'm working in 1:36, I don't have a vehicle I could fit a 1:24th scale version into. The fellow that printed the masters for my guns is building one of the SC&H Cruiser class brigs as the Scorpion, and intends to build another Lively class frigate, the Spartan, in 1:24 scale. That will have a 77 inch hull compared to my 59 inch hull. Scorpion in her first in the water test Back to Macedonian... I really want to get some paint on this girl before I take her down to the creek for her first dip, but I need to get molding and such on her first. I save old utility knife blades just for making molding scrapers. This one I made today with two patterns. The molding was applied along the sheer-line, with gaps for the channels. There's another line of molding above that. Here the channels are friction fit and sanded to fit tight against the hull.
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Sheathing commences on the starboard quarter gallery. Don't worry, I have cardstock patterns for everything so I can duplicate all this on the other side.
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Framing out the quarter galleries They'll be sheathed in 1/32" plywood
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Rough cut channels and laying out the quarter galleries.
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Entrance of the Queen of Sheba and a couple of others I'm actually not familiar with. I spent more time searching for music that fit and that YouTube wouldn't get all wadded up about, than I did editing the video. My aircraft ply order finally arrived so I got right into making a new pair of winch drums: The drums are 1/8" ply, the flanges are 1/16" ply. After gluing them up, they got a couple of coats of spray lacquer for good measure. I reused the plastic servo attachment disks and threaded rods from the last drum failure using the existing out-of-whack holes. Set in place waiting for a rig to grow around them again.
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I almost feel bad for down-rigging her already, but there's bolt-ropes to sew, chain plates to make, and rope to walk so that next time she sails it'll be with a permanent rig; shrouds, stays, etc.
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Well, I managed to get a sail in before it got cold. I had a short list of items to "test" with this expedition... Boat will fit in my Toyota Matrix. Launch trailer worked well, needs some tweaks to keep the boat from sliding off the end before you want it too, and there's too much slop in the flag-bracket handle holder. Self-tending bowlines worked well. Bracing only the tops'l yards worked well. Jib-sheeter worked well despite not being adjusted as best it could have been. Finally sailing in open water again where she was intended to be since I started her in 1999. I held my breath every time a gust made her heel. She did great. Remember to bring extra batteries for the camera next time. I brought tools, line, tape, glue, reading-glasses, tripod, and the camera batteries died. Fortunately Captain Rooney was on hand and took some stills and video with his phone, while sailing Son of Erin and keeping an eye on the two grand-kids - but he's a tug captain and used to multi-tasking. Here's some pics from today's outing. and 16 minutes or so of video...
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I've seen several servo hacks designed to have them run continuously, such as you might want for a winch. If I did this to a pair of cheap servos, I could Y them off the brace winch servos and they should operate together. This is something I'll experiment with down the road. Today I dunked sticks in ammonia and wrapped them around a tube to make hoops for the two trys'ls. While that dried I went to a friends and helped him eat the crabs he caught this morning. 26 more hoops like these for the driver It's been running in the 80's here for the past week, temperature-wise; that just broke this evening with rain, wind, and dropping down to 60° (f). Ready or not, when the these winds blow out, I'm hauling the boat out and putting her in the water. I want some pictures of her afloat with all her sail's aboard, and I want to test launching and retrieving with the new cart a few times.
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