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JerryTodd

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Everything posted by JerryTodd

  1. JerryTodd
    Well, it's not the best video ever made, but it may be of interest to some RC square-rigger nerds You may note that the Semaphore Sheeter only travels a total of 90° in the video, that's upgraded to 180° now with the "Servo-Stretcher."
  2. JerryTodd
    After all that work to get her ready for Port Fest, it took some effort to get up the gumption to take it all down - but down it had to come. After getting some specs for the fore and main course tacks, and making the extra disks for the winch drums, I pulled the servo tray out of the boat. Both drums are complete, parts wise, but I still need to cut slots in the drum disks for threading the braces into the center of each stack. Today the rig came down so I can move her about and open the door again. A good portion of today was spent, after planting tomato plants; in tracking down a fault in the wiring of one of the winch servos, which wasn't responding to input. I got a "servo-stretcher" which I'll use to increase the travel of the fore-n-aft servo that controls the heads'ls and driver from 90° to 180°. I rigged it up to test and set it when I realized the foremast winch wasn't working. Using a meter set for continuity and a pair of needles stuck in the wiring, I could not find a fault anywhere, and the servo worked fine on another channel. I was about to conclude the problem was a bad channel on the receiver when I rmembered that I had fiddled with some of transmitter settings trying to slow down the heads'l servo. I apparently slowed the wrong channel down to nothing. Resetting that to 100% solved the problem, though I still haven't managed to slow down the heads'l servo. Again, learn from my mistakes.
  3. JerryTodd
    The purpose of this log is so folks can learn from my mistakes, and occasional successes.
  4. JerryTodd
    The fore mast winch drum is getting close to done - I need to cut the slots for threading the braces and it'll be complete. The main/mizzen drum is underway. The threaded rod isn't thread over it's full length, only for about 1-1/2" at either end, so I need to tap the threads further along to get the length of rod I need for the now taller winch drum. Drilling stack of plastic is aggravating at best, so I quit before I took the hammer to it and worked on something else. In this case I traced a photo in Paint Shop Pro that I took of the ship's original end-boards that were mounted in her entry ports. I scanned one of the end-boards I made from basswood and resized the tracing to fit it. I printed them on the color laser and glued them onto the basswood pieces. Here they are sitting in place on the model. They need a couple of coats of poly on them yet.
  5. JerryTodd
    The drums have two disks for each controlled yard plus the flanges in-between. Adding two more for the coarse tacks will make the main/mizzen drum 8 disks high, and the foremast drum 6 disks high. I was a little concerned with the braces all pulling to one direction against the servo's spindle, so I got the idea of adding a bearing block to the fairlead plate that the bottom of the drum would slide against. The block is Delrin plastic and at that angle the bottom of the drum touches only a relieved corner of the block. What's pictured is Macedonian's servo tray, but the experiment being a sucess, I'll wrangle it into Constellation's set-up in due time.
  6. JerryTodd
    The foremast winch drum, as promised. The rods will be trimmed back after I figure out the section for the fores'l tacks. Further back I detailed making the first set of drums from wood with CD's for flanges. These are 1/8" styrene with some sort of thin sheet plastic with a texture on one side. The fore mast winch will control the fore and fore tops'l yards. There's two drums per yard, one for the port brace and one for the starboard brace, so there's four drums and 5 flanges separating them. As the drum turns it takes up on one side and pays out on the other. Adding the fore tack will mean adding two more drums and flanges. The main mast drum has a third set of disks for the mizzen's crossjack and adding a set for the mains'l tacks will make it 8 drums and 9 flanges tall. Because this pulling to one side concerns me a bit, I'm thinking or adding a bearing under the drum on the side where the braces come out, ie: the direction of pull, to prop up the stack. The ends of the bulwark were trimmed back to allow for the end boards of the hammock rail and fixed bulwark The cradle was rebuilt to allow the ballast keel to lay under the model.
  7. JerryTodd
    I opted to install the drop bulwarks here as a single unit. I'm considering opening the aft-most panel on the port side, and will have several open and the gun trained back aft. I guesstimated the size of the hinges based on the photo below and of the actual hinge I was shown at the ship. I printed them on card-stock and glued them inside the panels along with a eyebolt. I also cut the notch for the catting tackle lead in one panel. Then it got some paint. The formast winch drum was bolted together, but the picture came out badly, so I'll get into that more tomorrow.
  8. JerryTodd
    I started cutting out parts for a new set of winch drums. I still haven't found the last "new set" I had made. I clipped on the coarses to make measurements and figure out if I wanted to control the tacks by adding a new portion to the winch drums for them. In the meantime... I started working on making the fold-down bulwarks forward. Starting with a card-stock template... I made an upper and lower plate and glued 1/16" sheet bass to it. I framed it inside and covered the inboard side with basswood sheet. It's built as a single unit, but I can separate the panels with a jeweler's saw. That will depend on whether I'm willing to tackle the hinges. I'm thinking of just opening one panel forward, and several aft - but unless I concoct some hinges, these will be fixed open.
  9. JerryTodd
    I want to sail her next to the real one, and I'm shooting for August, on the anniversary of her launch. The real test will be having some method of transporting, launching, and retrieving her ready in time. I can't get a vehicle close to the launch site there, and there's bulkheads, a floating pier with a gangway, and various other challenges to getting her in the water there. I'm really considering getting one of those kit trailers from Harbor Frieght or someplace and building a box on it to put two, or maybe three models in it fully rigged. Here's a video of the Stad Amsterdam model, of a similar size with just such a trailer (starting at 0:47): The sliding servo, talked about starting a few posts ago, worked great, as did the semaphore-arm heads'l sheeter. She also handled the wind very well. It gusted up over 15 a few times and she hardly heeled more than a strake or two of copper to it, even while grounded broadside-to with nothing to do but heel, and shy of a few pounds of ballast. Just last night I started cutting the disks to make her new winch drums (a temporary wood and card version was used last Sunday). The new set I made some time ago vanished in my moving, so I'm finally giving in to fate and making a new set. Since I'm going this route, I'll probably add space for the fore and mains'l tacks so she can set her coarses. I'll detail why I'm concerned more with tacks than sheets on the coarses later.
  10. JerryTodd
    I had a couple of people ask if I took commissions - whatever that means. I took some Damn Yankee Workshop cards along - we'll see if something comes of it. Last year someone was bubbling over wanting to write an article for some local magazine - never heard from them either.
  11. JerryTodd
    Pride went to the Baltimore Port Expo this last Sunday (May 17) and was on display. I finally got to show her to the director of Historic Ships Baltimore, who I sailed with on Pride in '81 - the period the model depicts. First she was stuffed into the van with Constellation. She spent the day on display under the tent. At the end of the day, the boats were moved so they could start breaking things down. She hasn't been in the water since she was floated in the tub way back in 2012... So, although she didn't have her fin, and only 10 pounds of ballast in her, I let her swim a bit before we left.
  12. JerryTodd
    Last year and this year
  13. JerryTodd
    Here's some pics from Baltimore's Port Expo for National Maritime Day. Constellation and Pride of Baltimore both went. Most of the pics show Costellation with no more ballast than her bolt on torpedo because the pool was still too shallow. Later I added about 12 pounds of lead shot in baggies inside which brought her down to within 1/2 inch of her LWL. Not a lot of sailing done - she needs and likes room to stretch out - especially under her keel. Gratuitous stuffed into the van shot. Set up on the table. We were in the main tent with the other exhibitors this year. The pool was at the end of the pier, more clear of Savannah and her interference with the wind. The pools not very big, or really deep enough for a model like Constellation, but she looked nice on the water anyway. Even Pride got a little swim. I combined all the "sailing" video from the event:
  14. JerryTodd
    Worked long and hard on getting her rigged with stays, braces, and sheets. Tomorrow is adjusting it all, touching up paint, and rebuilding her cradle to allow the ballast tube to sit on it - making attaching and unattaching it much easier.
  15. JerryTodd
    Last year it was gusting and the wind was bouncing off everything, including the Savannah, which we were right along side of. Everything on Constellation seemed to work itself loose. A few weeks later at St Michaels, everything went much better, though the wind was still fluky and variable. So this year, I'm not too worried with "at the event" as much as getting TO the event in good order. If it's to strong, too shallow, etc, then she'll sit on the table or get "anchored" for folks to look at.
  16. JerryTodd
    Got the port hammock rail caps in place with a first coat of paint. Getting the electronics in order and took a few "glamor" pics
  17. JerryTodd
    Cut some 1/2" by 1" strips from a plank of balsa I have kicking about and began capping off the port side hammock rails.
  18. JerryTodd
    Well, saying out loud that I intended to do something outside was a mistake. The entity that always ensures it will be cloudy whenever there's an astronomical event I want to see, apparently made sure it would rain today, so I couldn't move the garage/shop contents outside to bring some order to my chaos.
  19. JerryTodd
    Worked a bit on getting the mechanics and electronics into her. Mounted the on/off switch under the skylight. The wires that ran from the switch charging lead harness to the servo try and Rx were cut to make the harness separate from the servo rig using a two prong plug, but the "crimp-on" connectors slipped right off as soon as I tried to separate the plug - so some time was spent trying to find the soldering iron. Tomorrow will be a drag everything in the shop out onto the driveway day and get this feces sorted or die trying. If that's the case, BTW, I won't be posting pictures.
  20. JerryTodd
    Not the best image, but the first of her with t'gallants up. This is pretty much what she'll be wearing to the ball next weekend.
  21. JerryTodd
    RBModel has shackles, some with threaded pins, some with clevis pins (pin with a hole for a cotter pin). I'm not sure if they go as small as you need, the smallest seems to be about 7mm tall. I've been dealing with these folks for years and have always been happy with their products.
  22. JerryTodd
    See: This Post in this thread
  23. JerryTodd
    Yesterday I did some filling and paint touch-up, and began bending sails. Today I began jury rigging. So far the two tops'ls are up. Last time I did this event the sails were lifting the coarse yards, this time I ran the tops'l sheets down to deck to act as a down-haul and prevent that from happening this time. The fore-topmast-stays'l and the jib are up minus their sheets. I'll probably set the outer or flying jib as well. Because of the added sails, I'll be rigging rudimentary shrouds and stays especially for the t'gallant poles. The top masts are lowered so the garage door won't hit them - just in case. Once the sails are on I'll take a few pics outside
  24. JerryTodd
    I'm pretty good with cats actually, Bob. We'll see how I do with dogs when I get to the capstan. That's a-pawling isn't it? Pat, there will be pictures, and probably some video too. This morning was spent making the starboard cathead. Seven layers were cut from 1/16" bass sheet, three of those cut short to allow for the sheave slots. The short layers were glued to long layers as well as walnut dowel sheaves, and the bass end pieces from the cut-off portions. Again the hull was pierced to make a socket for a cathead. The position marked; precut with a knife to keep the glass from tearing out; then successively larger holes drilled. The final hole was squared by roto-tool with a burr on a flex-extension and a lot of knife and file work. There's about 1-1/2 inches inside the hull and a little over 2 inches exposed. Knees were made from oak and glued to the cathead, though the cathead isn't attached to the hull as yet. Everything will be epoxied in place and pinned with brass rod; any gaps filled, and all painted black and white.
  25. JerryTodd
    Baltimore's PortFest is May 18th - I'm going just to see that "six-foot sailing model of USS Constellation!"

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