JerryTodd

I hate to divert folks from the forum, but what this forum is to craftsmanship and quality, RCGroups is to RC - and there's no reason you can't frequent both - I do.

ALWAYS have a thumb-stall on the touch hole when anything is going in the barrel AND NEVER use water-proof fuse. Hands are a terrible thing to blow off.

At a distance new baggywrinkle tends to look a bit like fuzzy caterpillars or pipe-cleaners. It gets droopy with age and looks more like hair than fuzz. When I was on her in 78-79, Gazela Primeiro's entire forestay was baggywrinkled along with many spots on the backstays. We replaced a portion of it on the forestay and made it up just as shown in the diagram already posted. It's a bit like wrapping garland tightly around a rope - it takes a lot of it to cover any length and we had about a 6 foot section to replace. I don't see it on models very much, even the model of Gazela in Philly doesn't have a speck of it. I also seldom ever see it in paintings, but then most paintings of ships aren't done by someone that knows anything about ships.

So, I stuck some pins in the aft hatch cover, and that seems like it'll do the job... and the forward hatch is framed out. This is a bit more complicated than it appears because of the blocking I installed for the through-deck fairleads that the hatches cut into to some degree and though incorporated into the hatch framing, still leave odd-shapes places that I need to fill in. What's interesting is, in the case of Constellation at least, I really could have waited to have the deck on and planked before installing the fairleads - there's none of them I can't get at through all these hatches. While the deck has some camber in it at the hatches, the framework underneath is flat, as is the ledge around it's opening. I could have framed this all out before laying the subdeck and it would have been more structurally sound and looked a lot less like Frankenstien's monster. I started down that road a long time ago when I intended to use PVC pipe caps for access hatches (these pics from 2009): I didn't got with that because the opening was too small for me to get at anything through it. Macedonian will benefit from this experience at least

I see what you mean, though I think it would require more accuracy than I built into it. I'm actually not all that concerned about it being water-tight. It'll be snug enough to keep out deck wash and there's nothing directly under either one that a few drips would hurt. I'm going to use some soft closed-cell foam on the ledge for the hatch to sit on. It should conform to any imperfections in my workmanship.

Amen brother My projects always seem to be about how I get something done I should have done before I carried on with something else, case in point, installing the daggerboard box for my Pride's fin keel. Part of the reason I document my projects publicly is to broadcast such mistakes as warnings to others that might be about to make the same ones, and so I don't forget on the next project - sort of like marking a minefield.

Framing continues. I think I'll close all the hatches up using a pair of pins at one end and a screw into a threaded insert at the other end. The maple framing of the hatch cover, 3/16" plywood, fiberglass, and 3/16" bass decking should make it stiff enough that a single screw will hold it against whatever seal I place in the opening. On these the pivot guns will serve as handles, the main hatch will have the boats on it, and the battery hatch will have the capstan.

Chopped out a hole forward... ...and began framing... This is starting to feel like a home improvement job. BTW: In looking for where the main sheet went, after seeing that thing with the main brace, I discovered that the main brace didn't lead to the chock at all, and the main sheet didn't go to the boomkin at all - the main sheet goes goes to the chock! The brace apparently goes aboard through the bulwark in some way, but the brace is the only line going to the boomkin.

There's was an excel spreadsheet on MSW that had information of that nature - I thought. I experimented to get some idea of what I could get with the material I was using - Dacron sail thread . The thread counts in the image are per strand.

For Niagara built where lumber was plentiful, 20 - 30 foot planks 6 or 8 inches wide on average.

First off, if you use "scale length planks, they need not end on a bulkhead. You can always glue a block on the inside to steady the plank ends - a butt block. Your planks are going to bend and twist from bow to stern, and getting one plank to do that and controlling it while you get it glued down is a real pain you can avoid simply by using scale plank lengths. When you taper planks, or need to add stealers, that's also much easier to handle using scale plank lengths.

With one holiday's nonsense out of the way, and the weather a little warmer - I framed out the aft hatch opening. This thing has to be in place before I can start laying the deck, ditto the forward hatch.

I start at the center of the head and work around the sail back to the center of the head. I overlap the ends a little and basically seize the ends together through the sail with stitching. Keep in mind; I work in larger scales on sails for working models. The bolt rope is stitched on in a short-hand version of how they are actually sewn on (I skip a couple of lays of the rope with each stitch). The bolt rope is also glued to the sail with fabric glue as I sew it on. The nylon line I used for the boltrope is soft enough that it basically crushes together under the stitching and looks like a short splice. This is the best image I could find where you can see the overlap at the head. You should be able to pick out the stitching which is a tanish color that matches the flax I've used to sew the real thing. This is a fore tops'l for a 1:20 scale Baltimore Clipper schooner. The sail is made of Supplex, the seams are drawn with a .03 permanent marker on both sides, offset slightly from each other. All tabling, hems, bands, etc are glued on with fabric glue. All holes are made with the tip of a hot soldering iron. Cringles are made by taking a turn around a round toothpick and seizing the eye to the sail at it's throat, and on either side. This is done on full size sails as well, but because my sails are driving working models, I don't want the boltrope slipping through a zig-zag stitch from a sewing machine and closing up the eyes and cringles. This sort of seizing is done every where something will attach or pull and every 4 or 5 scale feet along the bolt-rope as I sew it on. I have simplified things a lot, especially on Constellation where I've used a simple eye in the bolt-rope at the clews instead of the iron rings and hardware she probably would have had. BTW: While sewing on a bolt-rope, I've missed a cringle or screwed up in some other way that the easiet fix was to cut the line and pick up from there. Here I overlapped the bolt rope just as I did at the head. The first time I cut the three strands of the bolt rope at different lengths to taper it, but after that I didn't bother with tapering. Having sewn real bolt ropes to real sails, I'm happy enough with the appearance I get this way, and it's much much easier than trying to use a sewing machine.

You're going to have quite a squadron of fat boys around the house if you keep this up. You should consider a frigate or a razee, something more svelte for the next one.

I gave milling the maple for deck planking a shot. I determined I needed 3/16" x 3/16" x 6-5/8" pieces. I rigged the table saw and had no problem ripping out 3/16" little boards from the 3/4" thick piece, but ripping that into 3/16" strips wasn't working for me - I just couldn't get it rigged where it felt safe, so I broke down and ordered a pile of 3/16" x 3/16" x 48" basswood strips. The stock for the deck planking arrived Saturday, and Sunday I cut it into 6-5/8" lengths. That got 7 pieces from each 4 foot length leaving a piece about 1-1/2" long for the scrap box. In all there's 234 planks. After sawing all that lumber, Ivan was upset to learn he had 5 more to cut. He was even more upset to learn he had 266 more after that! Unfortunately, that's not enough. Have I mentioned math is not my strong suit? I was playing with the idea of 1/4" wide planks and may have confused my calculations with that, but... The deck is 61" long and 12-1/4" wide at it's widest point. The ends are nearly half round and there' maybe two plank widths on either side of "bulge," ie: the deck is nearly rectangular, with rounded corners. 61" requires 9.2 planks end-to-end and 12-1/4" requires 67 3/16" planks across - that's 616.4 planks to cover the deck. But wait! There's a 14-1/4" x 6" main hatch and a 6" x 3-1/4" battery hatch opening. They add up to 104 planks I don't need. I estimate the "corners and other small hatches and openings will negate some 12 planks, so that's 616-116=500. That means I need 266 more planks beyond what I have! Time to order another 37 4 foot pieces - actually I ordered 40. In the meantime, I figured out and opened the aft hatch. The deck portion that was cut out got a cambered frame epoxied to it's forward edge. The rest of it will get framed in a similar manner. The perimeter of the hatch opening will also be framed with a small ledge for the hatch to sit on. This ledge will have some weather-strip material to keep water out. I'd like to make some sort of dead-bolt locking mechanism that uses the pivot gun as it's lever to latch the hatch down - but that may be more trouble than it's worth. If so, I'll simply fasten this hatch down with countersunk screws. The gun will still serve as a handle to lift out the hatch cover/deck section.

This painting of Cumberland's fight with Virginia is at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News VA. It's an interesting painting with all sort's of things wrong with it - but it get's the feeling across. Of those many emails we get from hobby suppliers announcing sales and such came one announcing that naked man here was going on sale. The Brothers Nude will serve as the masters for my clone army, or rather navy of 1:35 scale clones - ie: crew. From another hobby supplier (RBModel in Poland) I got some brass stuff; belaying pins, working shackles, and a pair of clevis parts that made a perfect goose-neck for the driver boom, replacing the old hook. Sorry for the blurry shot, I'm using a new used camera and I haven't got it completely figured out yet. I used some of the thin strip wood from some old wood kits to make a set of sail hoops for the driver. Just slice the strip to width, wet, and wrap around an appropriate size dowell. Glue them up when they're dried.

A launch with an awning - that looks like a sail

I had masters (from which I will cast the battery in resin) for my Macedonian's guns 3D printed; 5 32 pdr carronades and 5 18 pdr Bloomfield pattern guns is 1:36 scale - $250 That, BTW, was the "discounted price" because a friend was getting a bunch of other items printed as well. 5 of each was a minimum order A company that digitally scanned the Macedonian figurehead at the naval academy found me online and offered to 3D print one in 1:36 scale for me for a mere $250. I'm very happy with the quality of the guns but this isn't sustainable at all for someone like me. There's no way I'm going for that figure head, or anything else for that matter, and there's a lot of things I'd love work up in CAD and just print - those god-forsaken trailboards on Constellation, for instance. At $5 a gun, I would have had them print the entire battery, and come back for something else - as it is, they aren't going to see me again.

Yes, that's a quarter gallery. Constellation appears to have all the windows, but they're painted over with only the one sash left open, while Cumberland and Savannah seem to have planked up galleries with only a small port left open. I was going to say the number of gun ports was wrong for Cumberland by just looking at the plans for her and her sisters (Brandywine) as frigates but Chapelle shows her as a razee with 13 ports, not counting the one covered by the quarter gallery. So they reduce the number of gun ports when they razeed them? How was the image IDed as Cumberland, d'ye know? The attached painting shows up IDed as the Levant. It's not Levant by any measure, and I'm certain it's Constellation because it's not Macedonian or any of the razeed Brandywines (RB's), and the other sloops had fewer gun ports. A profile comparison of Constellation and Levant to scale. Savannah an RB shows 14 ports contrary to what the Portsmouth image and Chapelle show for Cumberland. Every time I look, I find something I overlooked before - I never noticed the change in the number of gunports on the Brandywines and Macedonian when they were razeed. And the different number on the different Brandywines - Cumberland 13, Savannah - 14. Look at all the great details in this photo of Macedonian in the 1860s: She sports a bridge deck, the catting boom's replaced the catting davit, she has drop bulwarks like Constellation's up forward.

Someone here went to the museum in Savannah where the model is displayed, and posted images of it before the MSW crash. I saved them because of her similarities to Constellation in some respects, As this most recent case, she's been very influential in my building Constellation. I think she's 1:24 scale. I found out who built her and tried to find a contact for him a while back - with no luck. I'd love to talk to him about the ships and research sources because I found he came to the same conclusion on some things, and may have some information I missed, like this recent revelation. I hope to see the model in person someday, and take my own photos of key items of interest to me - Constellation will probably be long complete by the time that happens.

Looking at how decks were done on other models, especially larger models like mine, I came across this image that was posted on MSW a long time ago, of the Savannah. What caught my eye wasn't the deck, but where is the main brace going? The 1888 spar deck drawing (the archives lost the 1854 drawing) shows a chock through the bulwark just forward of the mizzen channel. I never figured out what this was for, except maybe something to do with the main stuns'l boom. Any photo where I can see the main brace lead, it goes through the bulwark right there at the boomkin. The Savannah model made me realize something - ALL those photos of Constellation are after the aft folding bulwarks were replaced by a solid bulwark. But when the folding bulwarks were in place, running the main brace there would be in the way. So, here's a portion of a 1914 image where you can see the chock through the bulwark with nothing rove through it, and the main brace block on the boomkin. I added a dashed line to show the old lead. Changing the main brace fairleads on the model won't be a big deal, I can reach inside where the new fairlead will go, and it actually clears up some traffic issues I had back at the quarters, but... Where did the main sheet go?

So, I haven't had the chance yet to set up the saw for milling the deck planking, but I have been researching the subject. The oldest image I've found that shows the deck shows the ship had planks that were about 8 inches wide (relative to people's feet). At some point by 1914 she was redecked with narrower planks, around 4 inches wide. The restoration's no help - they've done something completely different. What I was trying to determine was if the planks were nibbed into a margin plank fore and aft. I can't find anything that shows that. I haven't just been looking only at Constellation but also at photos of her contemporaries, mostly via Civil war images. Of those, where it can be seen, I can't make out evidence of a margin plank with plank ends nibbed in. Meanwhile, I hemmed some of the sails; all the t'gallants and royals. The main coarse was hemmed just today. I was just asked how I intend to reduce sail if needed. All the sails will have operable buntlines, clewlines, etc (manual, not RC) The t'gallants and royals will also be fairly easy to remove, yard and all. With the coarses bunted up and the t'gallants and royals off her - she'll be ok in most conditions, If not, I won't be sailing her.

I don't get what makes O'Brien's books somehow better than any others. The first one was such a chore to read I nearly tossed it and blew off the series entirely. To be honest, it was Hunt's artwork on the covers that drew me to the books at all.

As promised, the weather was beautiful today, and I took advantage of it to fiber-glass the deck. I masked the hull from the probable drips, mixed up the last of the epoxy Mark gave me, painted the sub-deck with it, laid the glass cloth on it, and wetted it down. I used every drop of the epoxy and it set up perfectly. I went and got something to eat and drink, and when I got back I was able to trim the mast openings and hatches. I need to get more epoxy to glue down the deck planking, but first I have to mill up the maple board into planks.

Meanwhile, back on the smaller version.... Making the trusses for the tops'l yards isn't going as well as the coarse yard trusses did. The first failed, I nicked into it while cutting nearly cutting it in half, and making it unusable at any rate. The second needs a lot of finishing, to be usable, even then there's two more to make and then the parrels. I haven't figured out how I'm going to make the hinged band that's the parrel. These are lined with wood staves, almost like a barrel I rooted around till I finally found the Bondo, and went at the deck with it. The stuff was setting up so fast I could hardly mix more than a putty knife full without it going off before I could use half of it. I got most of it done, but there's more to do, specifically around the deck-hull joint. It's supposed to get almost to 80° around here tomorrow, so I'm hoping to finish the Bondo job and get the glass laid. While that sits in the sun, I'll start milling up the deck planking from some maple I found while looking for the Bondo. I'm sure pine would have done fine for the deck, but the harder maple will be less prone to dings and dents as I work on the model after the deck is on.