JerryTodd

Well, she's down off the cabinet without breaking anything on her, me, or the house. Everything is jury rigged, I need to rig the braces and sheets yet. The electronics have been tested and the batteries charged. I also need to run the steering cables and she'll be ready to sail Sunday. I wish I had her t'gallant masts made, but, them's the brakes.

Every ship, I'm sure, has been lamented as a "wet ship." Even Constellation on her first trip to the Med in 1855 was said to be wet and took water through her ports despite split lids being caulked - on a brand new ship yet. Taking water through the ports doesn't confirm the absence of port lids unless it says there were no port lids. The US wasn't suffering from material shortages that would require such measures as foregoing port lids. True, her original copper was imported because Revere wasn't set up to produce what was needed, but this ship met the Guerriere 15 years into her life. In 15 years she was never fitted with port lids? And what about the other frigates? Just Constitution, a New England built ship, had no lids. It's an illogical argument supported by sketchy evidence at best. This sort of reasoning is like saying Napoleon ALWAYS had his hand in his coat, because a couple of portraits showed him posed that way.

I once read a book on Civil War cavalry that cited some items about how the men wore and carried their arms and equipment that were ridiculously impractical and sometimes impossible. What was painfully obvious to someone that has reenacted Civil War cavalry on horseback for a couple of decades was - the folks that write books seldom have any practical experience in what they are writing about. I firmly believe this is the case with Constitution's gunport lids, or lack of them. It makes no sense to any one that's sailed anything from a dinghy to a full-rigged ship that a line of 15 or so 3 foot square holes would be left open in the sides of a ship supposed to operate in the Atlantic Ocean - and subs had screen doors too. I suggest the Hull model at some point lost it's lids, or, as isn't uncommon in folk art, which is what the Hull model is, the maker simply didn't bother to make and install them, probably to cut a corner due to time constraints. Paintings, well, there's a plethora of paintings of ships that claim to have been done under the direction of some authority that you'd think would know but are still known to be incorrect or misrepresent specific details; color of a stripe, deck arrangement, flags flown, order of battle, comparative size of vessels, etc etc etc. Why would Constitution not have port lids? If she didn't, why aren't there log entries lamenting the water being shipped in storms for the lack of them, or the snow blowing in during her winter stays in Boston during the "mini-ice age" of the early 1800's? It's not like they were some newfangled invention untrusted by crusty old salts, they've been around for a long time.

Real bolt ropes are sewn on in a particular way to get the most strength via surface contact. They aren't hanging on the edge of the cloth, but are laid on the cloth on one side of the sail and stitched between two strands of the rope and through a third strand. On my sails, I cheat a little. I use a bead of fabric glue to reenforce the attachment of the bolt rope to the sail and though it's stitched in the same manner, I skip 2 or 3 strands each stitch. The fabric glue lets you get away with this, and the stiches almost disappear into the bolt rope's strands. The sail itself is anchored at one end with a weighted line off the other end. This keeps the edge taught without stretching the sail and allows you to work without it flopping all around uncontrollably. I put about a 2 inch bead of glue down and stitch that much. Nice thing is you can leave this, take a break, and come back to it later. Yes, it is tedious, and I am not known for my patience. Being able to walk away now and then got me through 7 sails so far on Constellation (10 more to go) and 8 sails on Pride without getting myself on the evening news. I use DuPont Supplex cloth for sails. It's made for outdoor wear and is water and UV resistant. It's very light and forms nicely on the model. It doesn't shrink or stretch excessively and is stain resistant. A very nice thing about using a synthetic fabric is it melts. I used a pointed soldering iron tip to make grommets for reef points, lacing holes, and any other holes needed in the sail. This makes nice sealed edge holes that won't open up or cause a run in the sail. I made cringles and eyes in the bolt rope by taking a turn around a round wooden toothpick to hold the eye open as I stitch past it. Every eye is tightly lashed in it's opening and on either side as the bolt rope is stitched on. I opted to draw on the sail cloth panel seams on my sails with a .003 permanent ink pen, so I'm not beyond cutting corners myself Victor Yancovitch also used Supplex for his sails on Royal William and sewed the panel seams. It took a lot of trial and error over a couple of weeks, with a lot of wasted cloth before he and his wife finally got it sorted out. He also machine stitched on his bolt ropes, and after the model was sailed he found several places where the bolt-rope had slipped through the stitching and had to be hand seized in various placed to prevent that happening again. Again, I only offer you a view of the road some have been down already - the route you take is up to you.

I've been invited to take Constellation to National Maritime Day on May 18th. They're setting up a 56 x 24 foot "pond" for RC models at pier 13 where the NS Savannah is docked. So, as I get Constellation ready for her second sail, I'll post updates here along with pictures and a report after the event.

Those hoops look a bit snug there, they should be a little large so they can travel easily and not distort the sail by binding.

Bravo! Bravo!

I'd look at the photos of the actual boats - they often fill in where plans fall short.

That flying jib seems a bit high

How are you dealing with ballast?

So, I'm at a church yard sale back in October and come across a set of some 15 books about a character named Nathanial Drinkwater. At $5 for the lot I figured I couldn't go wrong, so... So far I'm well into the 4th book. The author is an historian and has been to sea; he's has done good research to construct his stories, though it tends to read much like a history book. It's a decent read, the language and nautical jargon is correct, and I've had no trouble picturing what happening by his descriptions. I can't say I really "care" for this fellow, all these stories seem to copy Forester and this one's no exception. Even less than a quarter of the way through the series, I have to say it was well worth $5.

He found me and the links are in my signature.

Bravo! I'm always on the lookout for ingenious ways to handle sails with the least amount of cost, tools, and engineering.

ok, but you're not both a midshipman and a lieutenant.

A Doctor Who fan, eh?

I build my hulls in a sort of Hahn method, that is the frames are extended up to a common line and fastened to a building base board until the hull is planked. This backbone building board keeps everything aligned until there's enough structure to do it itself. You might add extensions to the frames to accomplish that, and unless it's a horseshoe, you might still use that keel you have.

Very nice. My dad was on the Lake Champlain from 56-61. She retained the straight deck to the end. After mom and dad split up, mom still liked sailors, and was dating a fellow from the Lex while the ship was based at Quonset with the Essex. I got a ride in the back seat of a Skyhawk around that time.

The thumb thing, BTW, is a thumb stall. It's not so much to protect the thumb as to seal the vent. When the sponge or rammer is sent into the barrel it pushes air and you don't want that going through the vent as it can ignite left-over embers and cause the new cartridge to ignite as it's rammed home. The thumb-stall is a very important safety job and isn't just laid on the vent. It's pressed on and twisted so the tip of your thumb is pointed at your right hip with your elbow pointed to the right as you face toward the muzzle.

setting and brailing sails remotely almost always involves drums and winches which means there must be a full loop with constant tension or something will snag and jam or break - ie: downhauls pulling as haliyards let out equally. There are ways of dealing with all of this, but it requires an increasing amount of mechanisms below to do the job, and this model just isn't that big and has a lot of structure in it taking up space and weight. Add to that designing deck access to get at and service those mechanisms that's watertight. If it means that much to have this feature, you might attach the tops'l to the gaff and it's haliyard hauls gaff and course together, and they come down together. It won't be scale and eliminates the gaff throat and peak haliyards (the tops'l itself replaces those functions), but it would get the job done simply and efficiently.

I think you'd need mechanical fastenings for ebony

Gaff tops'l I, as you say, treat as an extension of the course, treat it all as one sail. Stays'l that have to cross a stay are another matter. Most models I've seen don't have stays'ls, and those that do either keep the clews above the stay, and often just don't bother with controlling the sheets, or just sheet them to the centerline and leave them that way.. One idea I gave some thought was a bit of elastic that would raise the clew just over the stay when the sheet was eased, but this too may be more trouble than it's worth. On Pride I'm leaving off the fisherman stays'l because it would interfere with the fors'l far too much and is just too complex to try to handle remotely on that rig. Trained squirrels, BTW, are also not feasible as they tend to gnaw on the model and fill the hold with nuts. More details on Pride's control systems will appear in my MSW build log for her, rather than clutter up Bedford's log. I've never used a bilge pump. I usually toss a feminine napkin in the bilge to soak up anything that gets in there and leave the hatches open for a while after sailing to let everything dry. Anything catastrophic a bilge pump wouldn't keep up with anyway. I also sail in salt water which little pumps don't stand up to for long.

Here's a quick post with overlapping sail sheeting ideas, just tossed together... Any one that sails knows when tacking, simply put, you let fly the lee sheet at helms-a-lee and take in the new lee shet after the heads'ls across the wind/centerline. Accomplishing that in a model isn't as easy as it sounds. For one thing, remote set-up don't tend to work well with slack. Slack lines tend to snag things and there's no one aboard to clear these snags when they occur. There's also the issue of space in the hull and access for installation, maintenance, and adjustments. Servo arms long enough to pull the required length won't usually have the room in the hull to do it. Winches don't have this issue, but have issues all their own - especially with slack. Typical way of handling overlapping sails with a winch from Dan L: A servo arm set-up from the late Jimmy James: A two servo design. One servo pulls the sheet to port or starboard, the second servo moves the first servo itself to let in or out the sheets, from someone on Model Boat Mayhem forums: My playing with the above idea, but with one servo. Instead of a servo sliding the other one fore and aft, the servo slides itself via a line to the other side of the arm. The sliding sheet: the sheet slides through the clew until a knot pulls it over the stay. Sheet doesn't require a lot of tension if used with a servo arm, if with a winch, that's another issue Someone posted this on RCGroups a while back and it looked really promising to me, but... I've mocked this up on the bench and couldn't get get a pull of much length. It's also tough to start the arm from center as the servo hasn't as much leverage. Trying to make this work within the space available in the hull hasn't been successful but I'm convinced something along this line is the answer.

On RC models you'll find a great many modelers don't want to deal with the mechanics of overlapping jibs; that is having to drag the heads'ls across the forestays. One manner of dealing with this is the clubbed jib, as shown above. This may work well for your forestays'l, but the jib is another matter. Some deal with this by raising the clew of the jib so it doesn't actually overlap the forstays'l and passes freely from side to side clear of the stay. This is sheeted through a ring made-off to the forestay where the clew crosses it and run down to the bowsprit and back to the servo in a way that doesn't interfere with the forestays'l. The jib then actually sheets to the forestay. Another option that may work for you is a continuous loop type sheet that runs from a winch or shuttle set-up, through the clew of the jib, and back to the other side of the winch/shuttle. A pair of knots in the sheet on either side of the clew grab the sail and pull it over as the sheet in pulled. The knots are spaced so they sheet in the sail snug on either tack. This gives you a jib that overlaps per your sail plan and work better if the sheets go to the bulwarks/rails like the real vessel's instead of the centerline where modeler's tend to put them. There are other ideas for dealing with overlapping jibs, but most require more mechanics to achieve, like two servos, etc. I've been playing with some ideas for my Pride because I not only have three overlapping heads'ls to contend with, but an overlapping fores'l, running main forestays, and running backstays - and darn little space in the hull to put a lot of mechanisms.

Add to that that any hole thru the hull should be over drilled, filled with epoxy, and then drilled to size so there's no chance of water getting to wood.

My build logs are back online and linked in my signature, I suggest the Macedonian as the best example; but simply put, I build a wooden hull, and glass it outside, resin it inside, all done. I build with scrap wood and planking cut from 1-by pine boards, usually 1/8" thick x 3/8" wide and 16" to 24" long. Cheap, but it gets the job done strong, fast, and light. You can fore-go the layer of glass, but even epoxied planking can open a seam with wood's movement unless you do a proper cold-molded hull, the layer of 4oz glass make's that point moot. My next hull will use balsa instead of pine in the same construction method. $20 at Home Despot gets you a quart of poly resin and a couple of yards of 4oz cloth from DuckWorks will run maybe $15. You can't look at Gucci-System for less than $50. Impress with your workmanship, not your wallet.